Breaking Boundary,Seeking Unity:A Contrastive Analysis Of Cultural Identity Construction In The Secret River And Benang:from The Heart

At the beginning of the twenty-first century,white writer Kate Grenville and indigenous writer Kim Scott set off a new trend of reflection on colonial history and personal identity in the Australian literary world.The identity crisis of exile prisoner William Thornhill in Kate Grenville's The Secret River,is similar to half-caste Harley Scat's identity predicaments,a character depicted by Kim Scott in Benang: From the Heart.The issues of the immigrants' identity and mix blood groups' identity have received considerable attention in the contemporary cultural identity research field.Under the impact of two cultures,the identity dilemmas of these people need to be solved promptly.Therefore,this paper intends to apply Stuart Hall's theory of cultural identity to compare the similarities and differences of their identity constructions in the respective works.It attempts to provide new ideas for the subsequent interpretation of identity dilemmas of the characters written by different writers.The whole thesis is composed of six chapters.The first chapter briefly introduces the two authors and their works.Combining the latest literature research of the two works at home and abroad,it proposes the originality of the study and the layout of the entire article.In Chapter two,it systematically sorts out Hall's cultural identity theory,including the definition,the theoretical origins and key concepts.Chapter three compares the shared dilemmas of Thornhill and Harley's cultural identity representation in the two works.The similarities are three dimensional.Stereotyped strategies influence their views on the Other;under the control of homogeneous cultural codes,their Self-identity positioning is misplaced;while driven by the identification forces,their cultural identification is blinded by discourse power.In Chapter four,it further compares the different ways of identity deconstruction in the two works.They doubt over the stereotyped views of the Other at different degrees.And based on this,they find out the displacement of their wrong Self-positioning with different intensity.Thus,they further examine the discourse power which influenced their cultural identification with different results.Chapter five maintains that the two authors' cultural identity reconstruction is different because the two authors choose different positions,different attitudes and different degrees of reconstruction.Based on the texts,the writers' different racial background leads to different Self-cognition and Self-identification.This results in their reflection differences on the colonial history.Depicted by Kate Grenville,Thornhill's subversion is vague and ambiguous,while Kim Scott's Harley is straightforward.Although the two works share similar cultural identity,the authors choose different ways of deconstruction,reconstruction and reflection on colonialism.Thus,the thoroughness of reconstructed identity is different.To conclude.Taking the indigenous writer and white writer's interpretation of personal cultural identity as a clue,this thesis intends to point out that Harley and Thornhill construct different cultural identity.Both immigrants and mix blood groups encounter the representational cultural identity dilemma,but different responses lead to different results.In face of the assimilation of strong white culture,white exile prisoner like William Thornhill applies white culture as his compass for Self-positioning,while mix blood group Harley Scat embraces the two cultures.Their cultural identification reflects the authors' ideology.The white writers' and indigenous writers' rewriting of the colonial history are different,because their Self-positioning and their views on the Other affect their characters.Though Grenville hopes to break from that white culture,her character Thornhill fails her intention in reconcile with the natives.While Scott finds ways to blend the two cultures through the identity construction of Harley.Returning back to the indigenous culture is his way to show his inclusiveness.Though the two authors construct differently,it is undeniable that they hope to learn from the past and build up a better future.They break the boundary of the indigenous and white group,and seek to unify with the other part.They also convey their desire in building inclusive cultural identities and their inner expectations for racial reconciliation.