Confusion Out Of Chaos

With works winning widespread recognition and high honors from literary circle,Ali Smith has become a widely recognized writer in contemporary Britain.This thesis analyzes declarification reflected in How to Be Both,one of her successful hits,on the basis of chaos theory.Chaos disturbs orders and creates confusion.However,Smith applied chaos deliberately,building a chaotic textual world,where,under the influence of chaos,identity,truth and existence demonstrate a maze of declarification.In How to Be Both,the confusion out of undefinable identity makes it difficult for readers with traditional views of mind to define gender and personal identity.Francesco's sexuality always flows between“male”and“female”,and the identity of George's mother is everything but certain,as a result of randomness and variable self-organization,revealing Smith's opposition to identity hegemony and voice for identity's multiplicity.The second puzzle Smith creates centers on her purposeful declarification of truth,confusing the readers by making certain truth out of uncertain randomness,unreliable truth out of existing valid information,orderly construction out of incomplete textual design and blurring of past and present.She takes advantage of uncertainty to voice that this is a novel in which the boundary of fiction and reality as well as present and past are declarified.Last but not least,confusion also occurs as George and Francesco are trapped,though in different ways,in the dilemma of existence.George finds herself lingering between the past and the present,whereas Francesco,as a bacha posh in the 15^th century,is stuck in the middle of men's world and women's world,while as a modern time traveler,traps in a disembodied place between life and death.Cornered at a transitional point and unable to predict the direction of life,both characters are subject to randomness of chaos.The reason why identity,truth and existence in the text trouble people is that the three are off the track of clarification.The nonlinear“derailing”in the novel can only lead to more multiplicities and possibilities.Smith's creation of declarification about identity,truth and existence demonstrates her concern with the chaotic reality that prevails in the postmodern world as well as her endeavor to bring a new enlightenment for people to acquire a profound perception of the nature of chaos and the impossibility of absolute clarification.