The Memory Writing And Ethical Expression In Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland

Jhumpa Lahiri(1967-)is a contemporary American Indian writer,The Lowland is her latest novel.The novel continues Lahiri’s writing habit of writing about Indian immigrants living in the United States.In space,it takes Tollygunge in India and Rhode Island in the United States as the coordinates,and in time,it takes the life changes of four generations of the Mitra family as the narrative line,which integrates the author’s thoughts on memory,trauma,ethics and responsibility.this paper taking The Lowland as the research object,explores the writing of memory and ethical expression in the novel from the perspectives of memory theory,space theory and ethical literary criticism.Taking memory as the entry point,analyzing the relationship between memory and individual ethical identity and collective ethical predicament.On this basis,it further explores the narrative strategy and ethical significance of memory writing in the text,and asks the ethical reasons behind the author’s writing memory.The introduction part briefly introduces Jhumpa Lahiri’s life,creation and her literary achievements,summarizes the main content of The Lowland,clarify the reason for the topic selection and writing of this thesis.The research status of Lahiri at home and abroad is sorted out,and the research methods and research significance of this thesis are put forward.The body part is divided into three chapters.The first chapter analyzes the relationship between the characters’ death memory,diaspora memory and the construction of ethical identity from the perspective of individual memory.First of all,the death of Udayan is the core of the whole text,which directly constitutes death memory of the characters in the novel.This has an important influence on the change of ethical identity and ethical choice of the closest family members of Udayan,his wife Gauri and his mother Bijoil.Among them,the memory of death has entangled Gauri’s life,which strengthened her ethical identity as the widow of Udayan,making her unable to identify with the ethical identities of the wife and mother in the second marriage,always in a state of being torn apart.The death of beloved son caused unhealable mental trauma to Bijoil,which strengthened her mother’s identity and spiritual connection with Udayan,weakened her identification with other ethical identities,finally her identity cognition became unbalanced.Secondly,immigrating to the United States and far away from the homeland,the dual wandering of body and spirit constitutes the diaspora memory of Subhash and Gauri as the first generation of immigrants.The marginalized situation of ethnic minorities in the mainstream society and the heavy burden on their individuals make them fall into the confusion of ethical identity.The second chapter analyzes the relationship between traumatic memory,cultural memory and predicament from the perspective of collective memory.First,the collective traumatic memory is explained from three dimensions:intergenerational,female and historical.The existence of intergenerational traumatic memory is an important reason for the crack of family affection,which constitutes the family ethics predicament of the memory subject in The Lowland.The space confinement encountered by women under the patriarchal culture and the marginalized situation of widows in Indian tradition are the important embodiment of women’s traumatic memory,which reveal the survival predicament faced by women groups.Many historical issues left over after colonial rule constituted the traumatic memory of history and the predicament of the Indian nation.Second,the immigrant groups are always confronted with the clash between the traditional culture of the homeland and the culture of the place of residence.Traditional Indian cultural memories based on festival customs,food,clothing,and language have been neglected in the heterogeneous cultural space,while the American cultural memories that advocate free marriage and individual space are more attractive to immigrant groups.Under the infiltration of heterogeneous cultural memory,the Indian immigrant group is faced with the predicament of lost identity.Finally,they choose to return to India to reconstruct national identity,pursue diverse and mixed cultural identity.The chapter three explains the narrative strategy and ethical significance of memory writing in The Lowland.First,the narrative strategy of memory writing in The Lowland is explained from four aspects:the apposition of four memory cues,the multi-dimensional mining of sensory memory,the "small history" narrative from the personal perspective,and the collective memory reconstruction under the mobilization of stored memory.Secondly,the author thinks The Lowland shows the ethical significance of memory writing in two aspects:from the individual level,it reflects the concern for the individual life experience and ethical demands,especially to the marginalized groups;From the perspective of social history,the return of memory cognition and historical reflection in The Lowland embodies Lahiri’s profound thinking about the future and the destiny of the Indian nation.The fourth chapter mainly explains the ethical exploration and ethical causes of The Lowland.By correcting past ethical errors,the memory subject bravely takes up their ethical responsibility,and finally realizes the restoration and exploration of family ethics in the reconstruction of family.In addition,the ethnic minorities of The Lowland reach an internal balance between the culture of their homeland and the culture of the place of residence by establishing a third space and pursuing a multiple cultural identities,thus realize ethical exploration.At the same time,the author thinks that the ethical causes of memory writing in The Lowland are reflected in the influence of the writer’s life experience and the consciousness of rebuilding the spiritual home.The conclusion summarizes the basic ideas of this paper,summarizes the connection between memory,ethical identity construction and writing of ethical dilemma.Elaborates the significance of Indian cultural tradition to Lahiri’s creation,and the memory writing and ethical expression of The Lowland are placed in the author’s whole literary creation system for observation and orientation.