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The aim of this thesis is to discuss the presentation of dualism in Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing. According to the established human epistemology, things are always termed as the one and the other. The binary categorizations of city and country, present and past, self and other, male and female, civilization and nature are all fundamental to human cognition. However, this kind of division is certainly insufficient and rough. It does limit some other possibilities. In other words, the division involves the idea of restriction and separation of only two. In addition, what exist at the two sides of the dual classification do not really oppose to each other. Once the established perception is reversed, the function of binary categorization will disappear. Therefore, the boundaries between the dichotomies should be transcended and even destroyed in order to accept all the possibilities in the world.
This thesis falls into three main parts. From the perspective of narrative, Chapter One surveys the binary presentations of city and country, present and past and self and other. As the narrator’s narration proceeds, the boundaries blur little by little. The interpretative systems of signs and language are dealt with in Chapter Two. Due to the insufficiency of language to express her experience, the narrator overturns the ordinary bonds between signifier and signified and articulates her life story in her own ways. In Chapter Three, the opposite category of men and women is dealt with in relation to the division of civilization and nature. Through the presence of dualism in this novel and the anonymous narrator’s journey to search for her missing father, the rooted thoughts change. Being in the city and accepting the past memory will no longer be a torture to her. Using the stable language, she can invent her own alternative language to express. Being a woman, she can refuse to be a victim. Retracing the binary boundaries and then crossing them, the protagonist narrator can expect the more expandable life to come.
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