What is to be done, as Mavis Gallant＇s only literary work for the stage, has received little critical attention since publication, compared to the increasingly voluminous interest in her 119 short stories that have f...What is to be done, as Mavis Gallant＇s only literary work for the stage, has received little critical attention since publication, compared to the increasingly voluminous interest in her 119 short stories that have firmly established her literary reputation. This article focuses on how the Canadian writer masterfully manipulates the literary techniques of light humorous but thought-provoking ironies and satires in her play to expose the fallacies and absurdities of the incongruous Marxist ideologies in real life and practice, and to reveal the political and personal conflicts and dilemmas of Canadians towards the end of the war. It concludes that Gallant is perhaps suggesting that only by eradicating communism, the root of all personal dilemmas for the characters in the play, can they eliminate all the absurdidities and incongruencies from their real lives.展开更多
文摘What is to be done, as Mavis Gallant＇s only literary work for the stage, has received little critical attention since publication, compared to the increasingly voluminous interest in her 119 short stories that have firmly established her literary reputation. This article focuses on how the Canadian writer masterfully manipulates the literary techniques of light humorous but thought-provoking ironies and satires in her play to expose the fallacies and absurdities of the incongruous Marxist ideologies in real life and practice, and to reveal the political and personal conflicts and dilemmas of Canadians towards the end of the war. It concludes that Gallant is perhaps suggesting that only by eradicating communism, the root of all personal dilemmas for the characters in the play, can they eliminate all the absurdidities and incongruencies from their real lives.
