The Black Dog is a contemporary British novelistian mcewan The novel tells the thrilling story of a honeymoon couple who encounter two black dogs in a valley in southern France just after the end of World War II, and expresses the profound thinking of human nature, questioning and reflection on modern civilization.
The novel is divided into a preface and four parts of the main body of the story: in the preface on page 11, Jeremy, the hero and first person narrator of the story, reviews his childhood experience in a clean, clear and even somewhat leisurely tone;The first part is that Jeremy visits Joan, who is terminally ill in the nursing home from time to time, to listen to her talk about her beautiful relationship with Bernard in the past, the differences in beliefs and the resulting estrangement;The second part narrates Jeremy's experience of accompanying his father-in-law Bernard to Germany to witness the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and his questions interspersed Bernard's memories and feelings of first love;In the third part, Jeremy recounts his re visit to the residence where his mother-in-law Joan spent the rest of her life in the French suburbs, and recalls his encounter and love with his wife when visiting the Nazi concentration camp;The fourth part restores the encounter between Joan and the two "black dogs" in the third person narrative.[1]
Catalogue of works
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preface
Part I Wiltshire
Part II Berlin
The third book, Maydanek, Le Salesay, Saint Maurice Navassel, 1989
Part IV Saint Maurice Navasselle, 1946[2]
Creation background
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The background of Black Dog is Europe in the 1970s and 1980s after World War II.After World War II, Europe's economy began to recover its former glory from the ruins of the war.However, the psychological trauma caused by the war is difficult to heal.The old beliefs tend to be obliterated in the fire of war, but the existing social order can not bring a sense of security, and human nature is increasingly cold, lonely and terrible.[3]
dominating figure
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Jeremy
Jeremy implanted Joan's personal experience into the broad historical background through the method of "life and times".When interviewing Joan, Jeremy became very interested in a picture taken in 1946. Joan and Bernard stand in front of the British Museum. The museum is a record and commemoration of history, and this picture is connected with the ambiguous failure of Bernard in the novel and the alienation of Bernard and the failure of socialism,The failure of politics reflects the failure of personal life.At the same time, due to the ubiquity and real-time reporting of the media, individuals always chronicle the current events.
Jeremy believes that rational thinking and perceptual understanding are separated from each other, and it is unreasonable to provoke opposition between them. At the same time, it is impractical to accept these two views.In my eyes, believing everything and not making any choice is equivalent to believing nothing ".Although Jeremy tried to find out the truth, the evidence he collected was partial, one-sided and contradictory, and the two objects he interviewed were themselves unreliable.As for the role of the black dog in the myth of Bernard and Joan, Jeremy realized that it was not important whether the story was true or not, but rather the function of history itself.
Jeremy can be called a "post-modern orphan", wandering alone in this era.He tried hard to accept and face his own rootless state and raised the question of moral responsibility.Jeremy's childhood experience implied that Europe, like an orphan, was helpless and afraid after the two world wars. It could not be free from war under Bernard's rationalism belief, nor could it be free from killing under the protection of Joan's mysticism aura.
Jeremy is fully expecting to participate in the historical event in Berlin, because it is not only a social event worth celebrating, but also a personal reward.But he and Bernard soon found that East Germany was still shrouded in the specter of fascism after it broke away from the socialist camp. That group of neo Nazi skinheads was the best symbol.The freedom liberation story broadcast around the world actually suppressed a more ambiguous historical fact, and Jeremy and Bernard became direct witnesses of this historical fact.[4]
Joan
Joan represents religious salvation.After experiencing a death threat experience, Joan believed that the two black dogs were the embodiment of racist hatred.Evil hatred is rooted in people's hearts. It lurks and waits for the day when it returns like a ghost.Joan said:"I don't believe in those abstract concepts, such as that a firm man of insight can initiate social change... Everyone should be responsible for his own life, and first of all try to improve it from the spiritual level... Human nature, human mind, human spirit, human soul and conscience, no matter what you call it, are all what we must strive to improve finallyTo develop pioneering.Otherwise, our pain will only increase.In Jean's opinion, only this internal evolution of life can make human beings live together peacefully. Without it, all great design blueprints are meaningless.[5]
bernard
Bernard represents science to save the world.He believes that when we are hungry and naked, the evolution of our inner spirit is nonsense. "The world revealed by science is intelligent and wonderful. We don't need to create a God because we can't understand the whole world. Our exploration of the world has just begun.".In the course of human history, the great material progress of living conditions should be attributed to the rapid development of science and technology.
When Bernard wanted to kill a beautiful butterfly and make it into a specimen, Joan objected fiercely, because she was afraid that the insects would retaliate against her fetus.Bernard thought Joan's idea was ridiculous.However, it turned out that Joan's baby had six fingers;After Joan's death, Bernard said that if the soul really existed, according to Joan's character, she would certainly appear and show herself the existence of God, but Joan's soul never appeared, so Bernard asserted that the soul did not exist at all.[5]
Appreciative Remarks
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subject
The Black Dog involves a lot of social problems such as terrorism, World War II and the Cold War. It shows the changes of human nature and human psychology in the memory of World War II and the shadow of the Cold War in fine details. It is a work with strong humanistic care.
First, the Vietnam War is related to Jeremy, the hero of the first narrative.The Vietnam War from 1959 to 1975 led to a surge of anti war in the United States.Jeremy, the narrative hero in the novel, represents the person who has experienced that period of history.In the preface, Jeremy recalled the life situation when he was 17 years old: young people at that time ignored their parents, often stayed out all night, wore miniskirts, tattooed on the body, held stinky crazy parties in dirty apartments, and drank all night.People are struggling in confusion and loss, and are busy filling the void of their hearts in various ways: Jeremy's friends are busy with drugs, alcohol and carnival;Jeremy's sister hurriedly walked into the "adult marriage farce of whip and stick";Jeremy is obsessed with walking into the home abandoned by his friends and talking with their parents, so as to alleviate the lingering sense of loss that has haunted him since childhood.In such a growing environment, Jeremy finally became a man without faith.Jeremy defines himself like this, "I don't believe in anything, I don't believe in anything. This doesn't mean that I doubt everything, or that I still insist on seeing things with suspicion while maintaining rational curiosity, or that I accept all views in an inclusive way - no, neither.It's just that I haven't found a suitable reason, a lasting criterion, a basic idea to identify and judge, and a transcendental existence that I can sincerely, passionately or calmly believe in.
Secondly, the irreconcilable ideological contradiction between Joan and Bernard, the opposite sides of the story, appeared shortly after the earlier Second World War.During the two world wars, the communist trend of thought was once in full swing in the West.When young people join various clubs, they always talk about communism.Joan was once a member of the Amhersham Socialist Cycling Club.Joan and Bernard joined the Communist Party at the same time.They hope to build a rational, fair world free of war and class oppression, and believe that they can be accompanied by youth, vitality, wisdom and courage when they become party members.It can be said that at this time, the two still have the same ideal and pursuit, but one thing during the honeymoon trip after marriage made them go on different roads.This matter is also related to war.During the journey, Joan confronted two black dogs on a deserted path.It is said that these two black dogs were originally raised by the Nazis, but they were left here after the war, which is a symbol of the remnants of war.It was this encounter that enabled her to experience a reincarnation of the soul, from an atheist to the embrace of God.Bernard, who came later, thought it was just Joan's exaggeration or fantasy.The two parted ways spiritually.[5]
artistic characteristics
In the first four parts of the novel, the author mainly adopts the first person perspective, and organically combines the first person internal perspective and external perspective.In addition, in the first and second parts of the novel, the author intersperses Joan and Bernard's respective experiences of their love and breakup memories, and skillfully combines the internal perspective of the person with free indirect speech to express the characters' complex thoughts, feelings and states.
In addition, in the fourth part of the novel, the author mainly adopts zero perspective to achieve "the unity of narrative voice and narrative vision in the narrator... with a certain degree of authority and objectivity".Not only that, but also organically combine it with the limited perspective of the third person character, so that readers can sometimes watch from the outside, and sometimes observe the development of the situation closely through the eyes of a character in the novel.In this way, the narrative discourse and vision are no longer unified in a single narrator, just like an invisible camera, changing the perspective of photography with the development of the narrative process.
In fact, the Black Dog does not impress the readers with its ups and downs, but takes the different environments of the characters as an important means to trigger events, build character relationships, and strengthen conflicts.Named "Wiltshire", "Berlin", "Maydanek" and "Saint Morris Navasselle", the novel marks the four part structure of the novel and describes events in four different spaces.From the perspective of the time and internal logic of the story, the four parts are not closely related, and the events do not have a clear causal relationship. However, the rearrangement of the story according to the four different spaces precisely takes cutting off the causal relationship of the events as the internal logic, and this spatial structural arrangement strengthens the readers' identification with the mental panic and anxiety that pervaded Europe after World War II.McEwan ingeniously constructs the narrative space in the novel, allowing the space to infiltrate into the narrative, so that the lengthy and longitudinal plot changes can be reflected in the different space leaps and transitions, thus promoting the development of the novel plot and the shaping of the characters, and realizing the perfect performance of the space narrative on the theme.Like other novelists, the main purpose of the author to construct such a novel world is to express his own exploration of the world.[1]
Work evaluation
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Full of pity but not sentimentality, intelligent and sincere in writing, a frank novel is also Ian McEwan's most humane work.
——M. John Harrison, Times Literary Supplement
The style of writing is simple and full of appeal... The novel vividly presents the European scene and vividly displays its complex moral style.
——New York Times Book Review
The Black Dog tells a wonderful story about the adventures of a British couple on their honeymoon in a small village in the mountains of France and two terrible black dogs just after World War II.
——Standard Evening News
In my opinion, this is his best work at present, and I want to make it clear that the content of this book is very profound.
"The Black Dog" has the film like characteristics... McEwan's insight is just like the steam rising in the crater of history.
——The Times
This book is famous for its skillful use of perspective conversion techniques and multi-level reconstruction in the playback of narrative time, which vividly depicts the theme of McEwan: our inherent ideas change the way we see, feel and remember things.In this book, the author's creative technique of digging deep into the characters' hearts has always played a good role.This book profoundly reveals the possibility that human beings tend to be pure depravity and absolute evil, as well as a dangerous happiness;Those two vicious dogs, like 'black spots in the dim morning light', can reappear in any form.
Almost in different ways, people will be hurt by touching them with super intuitive alertness. Black Dog isian mcewan His masterpieces in the unique literary field that he has developed over a long period of time,Confronting the aggressive predator with the threatened victims... another masterpiece that proves the most eye-catching revival of contemporary novels... marks that McEwan has transformed into... a novelist who is extremely outstanding because of his human agility and sense of responsibility.
A book full of tension and unforgettable... about the existence of evil and whether evil can be defeated by rational action.
——Sunday Telegraph
Calm and open meditation on the nature of good and evil, the moral bottom line of political reform and religious belief, the intoxication of violence and the redeeming power of true love - there is no trace of affectation or monotony in less than 150 pages.This is a wonderful book.
——The New Yorker Magazine
Author Introduction
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Ian McEwan (1948 -) is one of the most influential writers in contemporary British literature.Born in Aldershot, Hampshire, England in 1948, he graduated from the University of Sussex in Brighton, and later obtained a master's degree in East Anglia University.McEwan was once involved in the anti cultural movement in the 1960s. Later, he was tired of this anti rationalist cultural trend and settled in London in 1974.McEwan is good at delicately, incisively and coldly sketching all kinds of internal anxieties and fears of modern people, and actively discussing violence, death, lust, good and evil.His representative works include the collection of short stories The First Love, The Last Ceremony, Between the Beds, the novels Cement Garden, Only Love Strangers《Children in Time》、《Black dog》、《The Daydreamer 》Amsterdam, Atonement, Saturday《Chasing the sun》, scripts like "Or, Let's Die?", "Sour and Sweet", "For You", etc.[6]
