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凯瑟琳·安·波特小说的一个核心主题是探讨现代人类巨大而可怕的缺陷。在小说文本中,波特追溯缺陷的根源,揭示现代人和现代社会种种缺陷背后的真相。波特一生唯一的一部长篇小说《愚人船》,以船的意象作为整个现代人类社会的缩影,刻画了一群经历着各种“自我分裂”的现代愚人。他们或是在灵与肉的分裂中苦苦挣扎,或是由于种族主义而深陷身份危机之中,或是在父权婚姻与女性自由之间进行着艰难的抉择。总之,这些现代愚人折射出的是二十世纪三十年代一个正处于重大转型过程中的四分五裂的现代社会。本文对《愚人船》的主题进行重新解读,认为小说中愚人个体的自我小分裂折射出的是社会整体的大分裂,愚人们的行为是人性和社会在不同层面上分裂的结果。
A core theme of Catherine Ann Porter’s novel is to explore the huge and terrible flaws of modern mankind. In his novels, Porter traced the root causes of defects and revealed the truth behind the various pitfalls of modernity and modern society. Porter’s only novel, the Fool’s Ship, portrays a group of modern fools who have undergone various “self-divisions” with the image of the ship as a microcosm of the entire modern human society. They struggle either in the divisions of spirit and flesh, in identity crisis due to racism or in the difficult choices between patriarchal marriage and freedom of women. All in all, these modern fools reflect the fragmented modern society that was in the process of major transformation in the 1930s. This essay re-interprets the theme of “Fool’s Boat” and argues that the fissure of the fool’s individual in the novel reflects the fission of society as a whole. The fool’s behavior is the result of human nature and social division on different levels.