“我思故我在”——《纳罗斯》的思想表达形式与功能

安·佩特里的《纳罗斯》是对两性、种族与阶级之间错综复杂关系的剖析以及对美国20世纪中期北部小镇的真实写照,其主题已超越了传统黑人文学中心的种族问题和女性文学中心的性别歧视问题。该小说通过思想表达的不同形式来呈现聚焦人物的思维过程,不但突出了美国黑人的主体存在与身份意识,解构美国黑人的刻板形象,揭示小说中心的黑白恋情悲剧的深刻根源,还能促使读者反思美国战后的种族、性别和阶级问题以及个体、社会和新闻媒体在悲剧中的推波助澜,充分体现了佩特里的政治忧患意识和历史使命感,为其后的美国黑人女性作家拓宽了文学创作的道路。

Ann Petry’s The Narrows analyzes the complex relationship between sex,race and class and portrays realistically the small town in North America in the mid-20 th century.Its themes have gone beyond the center of racial issues in traditional black literature and the gender discrimination of female literature.The novel presents the thinking process of the focal characters with different modes of thought presentation,not only highlighting the existence and identity of African Americans,deconstructing their stereotypes,revealing the roots of the interracial love tragedy,but also encouraging readers to reflect on the problems of race,sex and class in post-war America and the fuelling effect of individual,society and news media in the tragedy,which fully embodies Petry’s keen sense of politics and history and broadens the road of literary creation for the following African-American female writers.