Journey Of Redemption:The Interpretation Of Time's Arrow From Spatial Narrative Perspective

Martin Amis is a well-known and controversial writer in contemporary Britain.He sees himself as a representative of the growth of the world after World War II.Therefore,many of his works are related to the major historical events of the twentieth century.His representative work Time's Arrow(1991)is one of them.In this novel,he uses a unique way to lead readers to re-examine the Nazi Holocaust.The arrow of time turns to the past in the world of fiction: The end of life becomes rebirth,and the result of things becomes cause.The Jews were reborn under the Nazi doctor's treatment.The time narrative method of the novel has been frequently interpreted by scholars,but the characteristics of its spatial construction should not be neglected.Under the influence of textual space,the theme of Time's Arrow becomes more profound and clear.In addition to the deliberate arrangement of time,Amis also ingeniously conceives the arrangement of space.Because of the inversion of time,the whole novel is like a movie playing backwards.So space serves as the ultimate clue to push the story forward.However,few scholars analyze the work from the perspective of spatial narrative.Due to this,this thesis intends to analyze the spatial structure of Time's Arrow from Gabriel Zoran's spatial narrative theory,and further explores the relationship between textual space and theme.Firstly,the thesis analyses two specific spaces in Time's Arrow from the topographical space,including the living environment and state of the protagonist Odilo in the pre-Auschwitz space and Auschwitz space.Besides,the modes of character existence are also discussed.Secondly,this thesis interprets the features of characters in the chronotopic space from synchronic and diachronic perspectives.At the synchronic level,different characters show two kinds of state: motion and rest.On the diachronic level,the directions,axes and powers of different characters' movements play a role in promoting the development of story plots.That is,the movement of characters is an important driving force to realize the hero's self-redemption.Thirdly,the thesis mainly studies the narrative strategies of the selectivity of language,the non-linear narrative and the perspective narrative from the textual space.It shows that narrative methods undertakes to highlight the space of texts.Finally,the thesis summarizes the relationship between the novel space and the theme of redemption,and it explains the theme of redemption contained in the novel.In conclusion,the space narrative of the novel plays an important role in characterization,the progression of the plot and the revelation of the theme of the story.This thesis uses Zoran's space narrative theory to analyze the space narrative of Time's Arrow,which provides a new perspective for the study of the novel.At the same time,through the analysis of the spatial structure of the novel,readers can deeply understand the evil nature of Nazi.With the retrograde passage of time,the readers experience the journey of human redemption with Amis.