本文是一篇英语论文，本文基于列斐伏尔的空间理论，将“边缘化”作为研究重点，从物理空间、社会空间以及心理空间三个空间维度对小说中的边缘化现象进行解读，从另一视角揭示当代西方社会显露出的种种问题。
Chapter One Restriction and Isolation in Physical Space
1.1 A Hell Excluded from the Center:The Pleebland
Atwood describes the miserable existence of the poor living in the pleebland.Thisis a place of anarchy and chaos.It is filled with dangerous forces and illegal acts.“Endless dirty streets...the dregs of society everywhere:drug addicts,muggers,beggars,madmen”(287).Here lives the poor and helpless underclass,most of them can onlysurvive by begging or vagrancy.Rows of dilapidated houses,dark,dirty,and dangerousstreets,factory chimneys constantly discharge a large number of harmful pollutants tothe air,garbage piles up like a mountain,the survival environmental conditions is facingserious pollution and damage.
The pleebland isn’t equipped with strict security systems.There are alwaysunknown risks happen.Anyone could be in danger at any moment:either the compoundspreads the seeds of a disease that cannot be cured,or people would be robbed bymuggers and deranged drug addicts.The poor have to live in this crowded place whereon the fringes of a cluttered,dirty city.“There were the usual political assassinations out there in the pleebs,the usual strange accidents,the unexplained disappearance.Or therewere sex scandals”(254).The pleebland is like a hell filled with danger.
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1.2 An Uninhabited Exoplanet:The Seashore
Under the influence of supremacy of technology and anthropocentrism,theseashore,as a natural space,has been abandoned by human beings,serious pollution hasbeen caused by a large amount of destruction on natural ecology.After the apocalypse,the wreckage of human civilization has been floating everywhere.What’s more,a largenumber of plants and animals that are genetically modified by the scientific elites of thecompound have survived,but they all seem to be mutated.The animals become morevicious and cunning,constantly threatening the life of Snowman,and the plants growlike crazy.The seashore therefore seems to become an exoplanet.
In fact,before Snowman and the Crakers arrive at the seashore,the environment onwhich humans relies on for survival has been at risk.When Jimmy is a child,the naturalenvironment has gradually deteriorated due to the abnormal climate change:“Thecoastal aquifers turned salty and the northern permafrost melted and the vast tundrabubbled with methane,and the drought in the mid-continental plains regions went on and on”(24).Because of the global warming,the sea level has risen rapidly,and theregion in the earthquake zone has frequently erupted earthquakes,volcanoes and gianttsunamis,engulfing small coastal cities.In Oryx and Crake,the extreme pursuit oftechnology has wreaked havoc on natural long before the apocalypse.
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Chapter Two Oppression and Predicament in Social Space
2.1 The Puppets under Totalitarianism
In the novel,scientists living in the compound are seen as the upper class of society.They may seem free and enjoy certain rights to survival,but the truth is,they are firmlyconfined by the compound.Jimmy’s mother Sharon has opted out of the biologicalresearch project conducted by the compound due to openly skeptical of it.The smoothprogress of biological research results makes it unbearable for her to breach her faithand will that goes against human morality and values.She resolutely chooses to escapefrom the compound and the surveillance of the higher ups.Using the only remaining“weapon”at home,the hammer smashes the computer that saves the biological projectsecrets,she takes away confidential documents,and participates in protestdemonstrations to speak up her strong voice.However,in the end,she is purged andcleared out by the compound.
Crake’s father believes in the noble cause of science for the benefit of mankind,“He believed in contributing to the improvement of the human lot”(183).When heknows that the compound is developing a virus that will be put into vitamin pills for ahigh profit,he prepares to publicize it on his website to expose what the compound(theso-called biotech company)is really plotting to do.However,disappeared in just a few days,he is discovered by the company’s executives,who are constantly monitoringthem,and are claimed to the public that he just“fell off the overpass”(183)and“By thetime they got to him he was cat food”(182).
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2.2 The Victims in the Hierarchical Society
In Oryx and Crake,Atwood takes from the female perspective and focuses onshaping the image of Oryx,a woman at the bottom of society with a humblebackground and unfortunate sufferings,but with a vivid personality.Through creatingthe female character Oryx who encountering the triple oppression of gender,class andrace,this novel represents the tortuous process and complex changes of her struggle forsurvival in a difficult social context,reveals the contradictions and conflicts betweenthis disadvantaged,marginalized woman and the colonizers of the patriarchal societyunder the colonial and post-colonial historical contexts.
Oryx is actually a kind of herbivore animal which are meek and docile,easilytamed,and most live in East Africa.Atwood’s intention to employ this name is a wayalluding the character’s unique personality and identity.Born in a poor Asian country,she is sold when she is a child to traffickers and is forced to work in a pornographicindustry.She is seen as a cheap commodity constantly and moving from man to man foreverything use,without owing name,dignity,and identity,she obeys everything that heremployers ask her to do,and treat her like an emotionless machine.Fortunately,because of her pretty face and smartness,she is able to keep herself out of a life of misery andpoverty.But even so,she has not been able to break free from the shackles of identity,class,and gender.
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Chapter Three Conflict and Resistance in Mental Space...................47
3.1 Self-disorientation of the Other Identity.................................47
3.2 Self-awakening and Resistance of the Repressed..............................52
3.3 The Trauma and Repair in the Post–apocalyptic Era......................55
Conclusion................................60
Chapter Three Conflict and Resistance in Mental Space
3.1 Self-disorientation of the Other Identity
For Derrida,the Other is a concept that comes with the Self.In the Westernmetaphysical tradition,the emphasis on the Other is dictated by the dominant entity,such as“woman”as the other of“man”.In the post-modern world,a structure of dualitybecomes the extension and expansion of logo-centrism,and this structure also givesbirth to a hierarchy,such as presence/absence,masculine/feminine,nature/culture,andthe latter of this structure has always been in a subordinate position.“Man’s exploitation is the fact of writing cultures of the Western type”(Derrida 121).Therefore,there is abinary opposition between male and female.Women thus become the absent characters,marginalized by the oppression of a patriarchal society.
In the novel,Atwood takes from a female perspective and creates the character,Oryx,who is oppressed by gender,class,and race.She is deprived of the right to takecontrol over herself,and subjected to male-dominated society.There is a sharp contrastbetween Oryx and Jimmy’s mother Sharon.Oryx is the submissive of discourse powerwhereas Jimmy’s mother is the rebel against hegemonism.She comes from the East ofan inferior country,borrows the language of her host country,and is viewed as amarginalized one.She has mastered the ways of obedience very well in life.Thedilemma and sufferings during her childhood teach her how to be a“good”girl and anobedient woman,and bring the ability to adjust to the surroundings around her.Whenshe is sold to Uncle En who is a trafficker and forces her to go into the pornographyindustry,she accepts this shameful job.She doesn’t escape or resist but rather choose toobey and comply Uncle En’s order,and work for him.Even when Uncle En has beenkilled furtively,Oryx still feel sad about his death.
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Conclusion
Through exploring the marginalization in Oryx and Crake from the space theory,this thesis examines the characteristics of marginalization from a new perspective,discusses the political,social,and historical significance of space,and probes into theproblems brought by anthropocentrism,technology,and patriarchy.What’s more,thisthesis tries to understand the marginalization from multiple dimensions,and putsforward some thoughts and warnings on the negative impact of modern civilization.
It can be seen that the marginalized groups in physical,social,and mental spacesare abandoned and excluded by the mainstream discourse.In the marginalized spacewhere self-consciousness and identity are constantly suppressed,it is their eternal themeto seek for their self-existence.However,in the social background of totalitarian system,they are disciplined by power,difficult to survive and speak for themselves,and firmlyimprisoned in the iron cage of power.In the competition and deconstruction of powerspace,they have encountered difficulties and obstacles in the process of self-identityconstruction.
It is found that the crisis between civilization and nature,technology andhumanities and arts are most contributed to anthropocentrism,the supremacy oftechnology and the oppression of patriarchal society.Atwood criticizes the currentWestern capitalist countries for grasping resources from natural space greedily in orderto obtain maximum benefits.Through the establishment of a spatial hierarchical orderof first-world/third-world,elite/common people,and society/nature with unequal duality,the compound with great wealth and knowledge becomes the center of power activities,while the marginalized ones become the Other,and are forced to isolate themselvesfrom politics,economy and society.Atwood constructs a three-dimensional spatial ordersystem by constructing spatial,individual and sociocultural marginalization.
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