被延迟的谋杀:论《伦敦原野》的暴力主题

Murder Delayed:Violence Theme in London Fields

在《伦敦原野》中,小说女主人公妮可拉有着强烈的受虐寻死愿望,艾米斯对这一人物的形象塑造备受争议。对于她的死亡,不妨提出以下三个问题:妮可拉为什么自愿被谋杀?谋杀行动为什么不断地被延迟?谋杀者为什么必须是男性?被延迟的谋杀实质上是一场精心设计的权力游戏。妮可拉对男性谋杀者的寻找对男权文化叙事文本构成一种反向对位式的叙事结构,是艾米斯通过迂回式的叙事策略揭示父权制社会权力运作本质的手段。通过把谋杀故事置于20世纪的末日荒原中,艾米斯把妮可拉的被谋杀纳入爱的死亡和核毁灭的危机叙事中。文本表层的谋杀叙事由此获得重要的隐喻功能,喻指20世纪末西方社会的情感危机和核威胁下的生态危机,传达了艾米斯存不忘亡的忧患意识和对当今人类生存状况的忧思。

In London Fields,Martin Amis portrays a heroine-Nicola that exhibits a strong sadistic tendency of pursuing her own death,which arouses much controversy.With regard to her death,the following three questions might be raised as well.Why is Nicola eager to be murdered?Why has the murder been repeatedly delayed?Why does the murderer have to be male?The delayed murder is in essence a well-designed power game.Nicola's seeking for male murderers constitutes a powerful counternarrative to that of patriarchal culture.This is the means by which Amis adopts a circuitous narrative strategy to reveal the essence of power operation in patriarchal society.By placing the murder story in the doomsday wasteland at the end of the 20th century,Amis incorporates Nicola's murder into the crisis narratives of the death of love and of nuclear destruction.The murder narrative thereby obtains an important metaphorical function,metaphorizing emotional crisis and ecological crisis under the threat of nuclear destruction in the Western society at the end of the 20th century,which conveys Amis's crisis consciousness and his concern for human beings'livingconditions.