《赎罪》中布里奥尼的生存困境和自我拯救

Briony’s Existential Predicament and Self-Salvation in Atonement

《赎罪》是英国作家伊恩·麦克尤恩的代表作之一,自出版以来就备受关注。小说主人公塔利斯·布里奥尼在青春期时铸下大错,并倾尽一生的时间进行忏悔。以往国内外学者的研究角度主要集中在叙事艺术、元小说结尾、战争与创伤、成长主题、赎罪主题等方面,而究竟是什么原因使得布里奥尼犯下大错,她又是如何进行自我拯救的。对这一问题,拟采用萨特的存在主义理论,结合其荒谬、自欺、自由选择等理论展开论述,以小说主要人物布里奥尼为研究对象,探讨她的生存困境和通过自由选择来摆脱困境的自我拯救过程,旨在揭示麦克尤恩对人类生存问题的关注。

The novel Atonement is one of Ian McEwan’s masterpieces,which has attracted scholars’attention since its publication.Tallis Briony,the protagonist in the novel,made a big mistake in her adolescence and devoted her whole life to repentance.Most of the foreign and domestic researches are focused on the perspectives of narrative art,the metafictional ending,the theme of war and trauma,growth and atonement and so on.But what made Briony make such a big mistake,and how did she save herself?This paper,based on Sartre’s Existentialism theory,will use the ideas of absurdity,bad faith,and free choices to probe into Briony’s existence situation and explore the process of her achieving self-salvation,aiming to reveal McEwan’s concern for human existence and his exploration of the way to self-salvation.