On Unnatural Narrative in Post-9/11 Fiction Flight
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14738/assrj.612.7529Keywords:
unnatural narratology, Sherman Alexie, Flight, post-9/11, reconstruction of identityAbstract
In the wake of innumerable and insightful studies on the unnatural narratology at home and abroad, it develops into a post-classical narratology that is comparable to female narratology, rhetoric narratology, and cognitive narratology. Taking the native American writer Sherman Alexie’s Flight as its central concern, the essay attends to explore the unnaturalness of the novel and further elaborates on its thematic meaning. In Alexie’s Flight, as a post-9/11 fiction, its unnaturalness can be explored by such elements as unnatural storyworlds, unnatural minds and unnatural acts of narration. The intentional violation of conventional narration further highlights the hero’s crisis and reconstruction of his identity in the post-9/11 world changed with the miserable memory in his childhood, his sublimation from terrorism to pacifism during his time travel and the regain of love in his final foster family, which consequently contributes to the final change of his appellation from “Zits” to “Michael”.
References
[2].Alber, Jan, et al. “Unnatural Narratives, Unnatural Narratology: Beyond Mimetic Models.” Narrative, 2010. 18(02): p. 113–136. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40856404.
[3].Alber, Jan, Unnatural Narrative: Impossible Worlds in Fiction and Drama, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2016: p. 14-25.
[4].Richardson, Ryan. Unnatural Voices: Extreme Narration in Modern and Contemporary Fiction. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2006: p. 372.
[5].Cooper, Lydia R. “Beyond 9/11: Trauma and the Limits of Empathy in Sherman Alexie’s Flight.” Studies in American Fiction, 2015. 42(01): p. 123-144. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/saf.2015.0006
[6].Steven Salaita. “Concocting Terrorism off the Reservation: Liberal Orientalism in Sherman Alexie's Post-9/11 Fiction.” Studies in American Indian Literatures, 2010. 22(02): p. 22–41. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.5250/studamerindilite.22.2.22.
[7].Sherman Alexie. 2007: p. 2-189. Flight. New York: Open Road Integrated Media.
[8].Nie, Z. 2014: p. 263. Introduction to Ethical Literary Criticism. Beijing: Peking University Press.
[9].Iversen, Stefan. “Unnatural Minds.” A Poetics of Unnatural Narrative. Ed. Jan Alber, Hennrik Skov Nielsen and Brian Richardson. Columbus: The Ohio State UP, 2013: p. 94-112.
[10].Rimmon-Kenan, S. 2005: p. 94-120. Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics. 2nd ed. London and New York: Routledge.
[11].Shang Biwu. “An Ethical Interpretation of Unnatural Narrative: The Foetus Narrator and Its Brian Text in Ian McEwan’s Nutshell”. Foreign Literature Studies, 2018. 40(03):30-42.
[12].Liu Kedong. “Reflections on Terrorism: Sherman Alexie’s Post-9 /11 Writing”. Contemporary Foreign Literature, 2012. 33(02):113-121
[13].Coulombe, Joseph L. “The Efficacy of Humor in Sherman Alexie's Flight: Violence, Vulnerability, and the Post-9/11 World.” MELUS, 2014. 39(01): p. 130–148., www.jstor.org/stable/24569894.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Authors wishing to include figures, tables, or text passages that have already been published elsewhere are required to obtain permission from the copyright owner(s) for both the print and online format and to include evidence that such permission has been granted when submitting their papers. Any material received without such evidence will be assumed to originate from the authors.
