An Interpretation Of Banville's The Sea From The Theory Of Subject

In 2005,contemporary Irish writer John Banville won the Man Booker Prize with his novel The Sea and vaulted into prominence.With its intricate setting of plot and unique writing technique,The Sea explores the relation among the subject,the Other,and loss.The Sea is a first-person narrative,telling the story of Max Morden,a sixty-year-old widower.Morden has been at a nonplus after his wife died of a severe disease.He escapes from London,the city that he used to live with his wife,and runs back to Ballyless,the place where he used to spend summers with his parents as a child,to try his utmost to give an account of himself and to assuage the pain of losing his wife.Banville excels in detailed depictions;both his spellbinding graphic descriptions and precise psychological portrayal are alluring,and they provide much material for deep thought.The narration that interweaves the past with the present and the memory with reality is no doubt challenging for readers,but its rigorous overall arrangement maintains the integrity of its plot.This thesis applies contemporary literary theorist Judith Butler's ideas on the subject to analyse how Max gradually becomes a subject,and how power makes a proper subject out of Max by wielding loss and melancholia.In The Psychic Life of Power,Butler points out that the subject is a site;by occupying the site of the subject,an individual gains social and cultural intelligibility.An individual experiences the sense of being the Other and forms self-consciousness;under the control of the desire to exist,the individual subjects to power and becomes a subject.Max's misery of being left forlorn without a protector and lacking in recognition perfectly agree with Butler's description of a vulnerable individual.Max's efforts to search for recognition and consolidate his social existence coincide with characteristics of the subject in Butler's theory.The compatibility of the text and the theory lay the solid groundwork for the thesis.Other than the introduction and conclusion,this thesis consists of three chapters.Each of them explains the emerging,forming and developing of Max as a subject.According to the different places in different periods of Max's life,the body part of this thesis falls into three chapters to analyse the different statuses of the subject.The first chapter starts with Ballyless in Max's childhood.Because of the lack of resources and psychological comfort,Max sets out on an expedition searching for what he lacks.On his expedition,he comes across the well-to-do Graces.The first chapter analyses Max's infatuation for Mrs.Grace,his relationship with Chloe Grace,and how the experience of being the Other spur the emerging of his self-consciousness.The second chapter is mainly about Max's life in London.Abandoning his birth name gives Max access to occupy a site in society,and it gradually makes him a subject in years of subjection to power.However,the subject is a structure in formation;thus,it is not a stable status.Anna's disease makes them both unwillingly face the threat of death,the absolute and ultimate fear of all.The third chapter elaborates how Max goes back to Ballyless after the death of his wife and how he strives to reconcile with the past through the significant means of memories.Loss occurs in different periods of Max's life,and all these losses have left an influential impact upon Max.Max's suffering stem from his loss.Power decides whether the loss could be mourned or not,and the loss that cannot be grieved results in melancholia in an individual.Melancholia forms the psyche;the psyche criticises the individual and forms the subject.To free oneself from power's control,one needs to get away from melancholia and grieve the loss.To grieve the loss,one must concede that there are traces of the Other in the subject;also,the Other helps to form the subject;hence,there is Otherness in the subject.By analysing the journey of the subject of Max Morden,the protagonist of The Sea,the thesis intends to illuminate new understanding about the relation between the subject and power,and the subject and the Other in modern society.The thesis finds that through reconciling with the lost Other and mourning the loss,one recognises oneself and balances the relationship between the subject and the Other.