Appreciation of Black Dog’s works

"Black Dog" involves a lot of social issues such as terrorism, World War II and the Cold War. It uses fine details to show the changes in human nature and human psychology under the memory of World War II and the shadow of the Cold War. It is a film of humanistic care. A work of intense color.

First of all, Jeremy, the first narrative protagonist who appears, is related to the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War from 1959 to 1975 led to rising waves of anti-war sentiment in the United States. Jeremy, the narrative protagonist in the novel, represents the witness of that period of history. In the preface, Jeremy recalled the living conditions when he was seventeen: young people at that time were dismissive of their parents, often staying up all night, wearing miniskirts, tattoos on their bodies, and holding smelly fumigation ceremonies in dirty apartments. Days of crazy partying and all-night drinking and partying. People are struggling with confusion and loss, and are busy filling the emptiness in their hearts in various ways: Jeremy's friends are busy taking drugs, drinking and partying; Jeremy's sister hurriedly walks into "whipping and beating". , a spectacular adult marriage farce"; Jeremy is obsessed with going into the homes abandoned by his friends and talking to their parents in order to alleviate the lingering sense of loss that has haunted him like a ghost since childhood. Growing up in such an environment, Jeremy eventually became a person without faith. Jeremy defines himself this way, “I have no faith, I believe in nothing. It’s not that I doubt everything, or that I persist in looking at issues with skepticism while maintaining intellectual curiosity, or that I view all opinions with suspicion. Tolerant and accepting - no, it's none of them. It's just that I haven't found a suitable reason, a lasting principle, a basic concept to judge and judge. I haven't found one that I can sincerely, enthusiastically or calmly believe in. Transcendental Being”.

Secondly, the irreconcilable ideological conflicts between Joan and Bernard, the two opposing parties in the story, appeared earlier shortly after World War II. During the two world wars, communist ideological trends were once in full swing in the West. Young people participate in various clubs, and communism is always discussed in the activities. Joan had been a member of the Amersham Socialist Cycling Club. Joan and Bernard joined the Communist Party at the same time. They hope to build a sensible, just world without war and class oppression. At the same time, they believe that by becoming party members, they can be accompanied by youth, vitality, wisdom, and bravery. It can be said that at this time, the two still had the same ideals and pursuits, but an incident during their honeymoon trip after marriage made them embark on different paths. This incident is also related to war. During the trip, Joan once confronted two black dogs on a deserted road. It is said that these two black dogs were originally raised by the Nazis and were left here after the war. They are a symbol of the remnants of the war. It was this encounter that allowed her to experience a spiritual reincarnation, switching from an atheist to the embrace of God. Bernard, who arrived later, thought this was just Joan's exaggeration or fantasy. The two parted ways mentally. In the first four parts of the novel, the writer mainly adopts the first-person perspective and organically combines the first-person internal perspective and external perspective. In addition, in the first and second parts of the novel, the author intersperses Joan and Bernard's respective memories of their love and breakup, and skillfully combines personal internal perspective with free indirect speech to express the characters complex thoughts, feelings and states.

In addition, in the fourth part of the novel, the author mainly adopts the zero perspective to achieve "the narrative voice and narrative vision are unified with the narrator...with a certain degree of authority and objectivity." Not only that, but it is also organically combined with the limited perspective of the third-person character, so that readers can sometimes watch from the outside, and sometimes observe the development of events up close through the eyes of a character in the novel. In this way, the narrative words and vision are no longer unified with a single narrator, as if there is an invisible camera that changes the camera angle as the narrative progresses.

In fact, "Black Dog" does not impress readers with its ups and downs of the plot, but uses the different environments of the characters as an important means to trigger events, structure character relationships, and strengthen conflicts. The novel is named "Wiltshire", "Berlin", "Majdanek" and "Saint-Maurice-Navaselle", which respectively mark the four-part structure of the novel and describe the events that took place in four different spaces. event. From the perspective of story time and internal logic, the four parts are not closely related, and the events do not have a clear causal relationship. However, the rearrangement of the story according to the four different spaces precisely cuts off the causal relationship between events as the internal logic. This spatial structural arrangement strengthens readers' identification with the mental panic and anxiety that permeated Europe after World War II. McEwan skillfully constructs narrative space in the novel, allowing space to infiltrate the narrative, so that lengthy and longitudinal plot changes are reflected in different spatial crossings and transformations, thereby promoting the development of the novel's plot and shaping of the characters. , realizing the perfect expression of the theme through spatial narrative. Like other novelists, the author's main purpose in constructing such a novel world is to express his own exploration of the world.