“局外人”的死亡想象:《死亡之匣》中的存在与荒诞

The “Outsider’s” Imagination of Death: Existence and Absurdity in Death Kit

《死亡之匣》是苏珊·桑塔格发表于20世纪60年代的一部长篇小说,若虚若实地展现了一个弥漫着死亡气息的世界。主人公企图了结自己荒诞孤独的生命历程,但在死亡的临界状态,他将死亡恐惧寄托于血腥的想象,以谋杀一个素不相识的人来证明"我在"。其实在一个孤独的个体自杀与谋杀背后,还隐藏着一个宏大的时代叙事,即美国与越南之间的那场战争以及由此带来的大规模屠杀。桑塔格以个人行为的荒诞为书写对象,矛头却直指战争的恐怖与荒唐,由此为小说镌刻下深深的时代烙印。

Published in the 1960s, Death Kit, Susan Sontag＇ s novel, depicts a world imbued with the horror of death. The protagonist attempts to kill himself to unburden his existential absurdity, but faced with death, he imagines killing a worker to identify his own existence. Behind the mysterious suicide and murder committed by a lonely man, however, underlies a grand narrative of the Vietnam War which took too many lives. Sontag seems to write about an individual＇ s absurdity, but her target is the destructive war, which is a hidden scar of the 1960s＇ America.