Character-Reader-Writer Collaboration: Ruth Ozeki's Narrative Identity Exploration In A Tale For The Time Being

With the advent of “narrative turn” in social science,the concept of “narrative identity” emerged,opening up a narrative approach to subjectivity and identity construction.Advocators of the theory look on human lives as unfolding stories.To answer the question of “Who am I?”,as they put it,one has to tell the story of a life,which allows people to gain insight into “who they are” and leave the self to be constructed and reconstructed in and through the narration.This thesis takes contemporary Japanese-American writer Ruth O zeki and her critically acclaimed “autobiografiction”(semi-autobiographical novel)A Tale for the Time Being(2013)as research object.As the important practice of narrative identity theory,the novel is worthy of being studied.By means of “autofiction” O zeki made herself a character in the novel—novelist Ruth and the reader of another protagonist?s diary.In this way,O zeki participated in the construction of the story acting as a character,a reader and a writer at the same time.This thesis probes into how Ozeki explores and constructs narrative identity by virtue of the narrative strategy of “autofiction” as well as the identity shifts and collaboration amongst character,reader and writer.First and foremost,this thesis points out Ruth Ozeki?s “autofiction”,an autobiographical touch to the novel,shapes this literary fiction with an over-arching authenticity.By this approach,Ozeki creates much more room for her narrative identity exploration via blurring the boundaries between the fact and fiction.Moreover,Ozeki?s practice of “fictional truth” made her self-exploration within the novel,to some degree,become clues of her experience in the real world.Next,this thesis deals with the concrete procedure of Ruth-the-character?s narrative identity exploration in three stages,especially her quest for writer ?s identity.In the first stage novelist Ruth suffers writer ?s block and identity crisis.In the second stage she ceased her obstinate pursuit of authorship to be a reader instead,by which she is able to update her reading and life experience,in the meanwhile gain intelligibility of the self in the accessibility and interaction between the world of text and that of life.In the third stage Ruth found back her confidence of writing and reshaped her cognition towards authorship.After surrendering authorial control to her work,and giving up writer?s stubbornness that a story must have an ending,Ruth eventually reconciled with herself.Then,taking the novel and its author O zeki into account,this thesis uncovers the two interpretations O zeki-the-author offers to narrative identity.One refers to the co-existence of “possible selves” in multiple worlds,which is initiated from O zeki?s quote from relative theories of quantum mechanics as well as her diverse self-imaginations.It broke the limitation of traditional cognition of narrative identity commanding a coherent and consistent whole.The other refers to “no self”,or “relational selves”,which is derived from Ozeki?s thinking with Zen Buddhist philosophy and helps to extend the scope of application of the narrative identity theory.At last,this thesis highlights that through writing and Zen practice,Ozeki gained a whole new understanding of life and herself,and finally refound the meaning of writing and living.