Slide 1 : Postmodern characteristics in
Julian Barnes’
“A History of the World in Ten & ½ Chapters”
by Virginia Cattolica Instituto Superior
“San Bartolomé” Reaching Farther, Reaching Wider III
Introduction : Introduction The notion of Postmodernism has been extremely controversial and difficult to define among scholars, intellectuals, and historians since it evokes, connotes, describes and contradicts many ideas imposed by Modernism.
Analysis of postmodern characteristics found in chapter IV, ‘The Survivor’, in the novel “A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters” by Julian Barnes.
The concept of Postmodernism and some of its characteristics will be considered along the analysis, as well as the notion of metanarrative proposed by Jean Françoise Lyotard (1984) and Gerard Genette’s (1983) terminology used to describe narratological devices
Theoretical Background : Theoretical Background Thinkers and writers such as Hassan, Bauman, Vattimo, White, and Kovadloff -among other scholars and thinkers- have considered a particular field of study namely history, sociology, religion, or politics where postmodernist views have been introduced and established, changing –and even destroying- many of the metanarratives underlying and governing the different disciplines (Lyotard, 1984).
A ‘metanarrative’ is a global or totalizing cultural narrative schema which orders and explains knowledge and experience. It is a grand, all-encompassing story that can come from a classic text or an archetypal account of a historical record. A metanarrative can also provide a framework for individuals to accommodate their own thoughts and experiences within the context of a transcendent and universal truth. They are subtle, trustful, and constitute the underlying principle of any story.
Slide 4 : According to Hassan (1982), ‘the public world dissolves as fact and fiction blend, history becomes derealized by media into happening, science takes its own models as the only accessible reality, […]and technologies project our perceptions to the edge of receding universe…’. Nothing is what it used to be: everything is relative.
Slide 5 : Thanks to the development of technology, mass media became of utmost importance for post modern society. Vattimo (1990: 12) sustains that the different means of communication are responsible for the ‘fall of the metanarratives’, according to Lyotard’s theory (1984). The different types of discourse imposed by the Church, by History, by Politics, by Sociology or by those in power in general fell into pieces. It is not possible to sustain them any longer: ‘solo hay fragmentos’ (Kovadolff, La Nacion, 1999)
Slide 6 : Fabulation (Moseley, 1997: 111) is not only a term that implies inventing a story but also a devise used to ‘describe postmodern approaches to fiction’. ‘Immanences, (White,1985: 6) […] is the capacity of the mind to generalize itself in symbols, intervene more and more into nature, act upon itself through its own abstractions and so become, increasingly, im-mediately, its own environment.’
Analysis : Analysis This is a book that begins with the woodworm’s story of Noah and the Flood, which is followed by: the story of a cruise ship hijacked in the Mediterranean, evidently in the 1980s; the transcript of a fifteenth-century ecclesiastical trial of woodworms who damaged a bishop’s throne and caused him injury; the story of a woman who may apparently in the near future, have survived a nuclear war; the story of the wreck of the Medusa, in 1816, and a scholarly analysis of Géricault’s painting of it… (Mosoley, 1997:113)
The book… : The book… A compilation of short stories each chapter has its own plot and all narratological devices suggested by Genette (Jhan, 2004).
A fragmentary novel the novel has no main character, no unitary voice, no tight progression in the narrative, no single or even double plot. However, there is a loosely chronological progression and there are many threads that lead and connect the chapters whether back to the first chapter or to different chapters along the book (Mosoley,1997:113).
The connecting threads… : The connecting threads… ‘…lost at sea in a raft […] a boat came along, there was a pretty good chance of being rescued.’ (Chapter IV, 98)
‘… the survival of the fittest…’ (Id, 100)
‘…fear of sensory deprivation which we know drives people mad’ (Chapter VII- 180)
‘… guerrilla attack or nuclear war…’ (Parenthesis- 225)
‘…the atomic reaction you expect isn’t taking place, the beam with which you are bombarding the particles is on the wrong wavelength. But love isn’t an atomic bomb’ (Id, 231)
‘…irradiated reindeer…’ (Id, 243)
‘…commitment to nuclear weapons…’ (Id, 244)
‘…he was fifteen when they dropped the Hiroshima bomb.’ (Chapter IX- 251)
‘…nuclear weapons…’ (Chapter X- 289)
‘… two long red hairs on my pillow to confirm the reality.’ (Id, 291)
A mysterious narrator: a woodworm… : A mysterious narrator: a woodworm… In the first chapter of the novel, Barnes used a woodworm to recount part of the Genesis from its own ‘perspective’. Due to this change in focalization, Noah and his family are seen as ‘common’ human people with some virtues and many vices.
‘The Stowaway’ : ‘The Stowaway’ The first chapter, presents Noah and his family under a different light if compared to the Bible. He is described as a dirty, ill-tempered man who had drinking problems. This twist in the new version of the Genesis changes the sacred perspective under which the biblical metanarrative was spread and learnt throughout history.
‘The Stowaway’ & ‘The Survivor’Instances of prolepsis –‘anticipation or temporal prolepsis’ (Genette, 1983: 67) : ‘The Stowaway’ & ‘The Survivor’Instances of prolepsis –‘anticipation or temporal prolepsis’ (Genette, 1983: 67) The reindeer: symbolic since it represents a kind of warning regarding what was going to happen in Chernobyl in 1986.
‘With the reindeer it was more complicated. They were always nervous […] it was something deeper.’ (17)
‘…some animals have powers of foresight’ (Id)
‘…the reindeer were troubled with something deeper than Noah-angst, stranger than storm-nerves; something… long-term.’ (Id.)
‘…the reindeer sensed something. And it was something beyond what we then knew’ (Id)
‘The Stowaway’ & ‘The Survivor’ : ‘The Stowaway’ & ‘The Survivor’ ‘Six, eight, ten of them, harnessed side by side. She always imagined that each pair was man and wife, a happy couple, like the animals that went into the Ark’. (85) ‘…irradiated reindeer are marked off by a blue stripe on their carcasses as unfit for human consumption’ […] ‘separating the clean from the unclean’ (88).
‘It must be an instinct in the human race, mustn’t it? When threatened, scatter. Not just running away from the danger, but raising our chances of survival as a species.’ (97)
‘I bet there were animals who sensed the Ice Age was coming and set off on some long and dangerous journey to find a safer, warmer climate’ (100)
Technology & Science : Technology & Science Barnes shows how another metanarrative, the one of Technology and Science falls apart. After WWI, it was thought that the use of Science and Technology would improve people’s standards of living. On one hand, Technology helped in medicine, transport and mass media communication among other fields. However, Science also led to the invention of new techniques of mass destruction. WWII proved the latter possibility: Science and Technology were used selfishly by some governments to massacre people and devastate countries. The atomic bomb thrown on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 is proof of this, as well as Chernobyl disaster in 1986.
WW II & Chernobyl Disaster : WW II & Chernobyl Disaster
The Norwegian reindeer : The Norwegian reindeer It was one of the victims and it suffered the consequences of Chernobyl disaster: it was contaminated after having grassed in an area that was polluted. The animals were slaughtered by hundreds and their meat was given to the mink to eat. ‘People who can afford mink coats probably don’t mind a little dose of radioactivity on top of it. Like a dash of scent behind the ears or something. Rather chic, really.’ (89)
Two voices: Kath’s & the doctor’s : Two voices: Kath’s & the doctor’s Kath –the female protagonist- is the autodiegetic narrator who tells her own, personal story. Here there is also internal, fixed focalization since everything is seen and perceived through her eyes. Some examples are:
‘…when I knew what had happened, I didn’t wait for Greg to come home.’ (92)
‘I couldn’t tell last night. I was coming out of a dream, or maybe I was still in it, but I heard the cats, I swear I did.’ (95)
‘I saw a flying fish the other day. I’m sure I did. I couldn’t have made it up, could I? It made me happy’ (96) There is a narrator who stands outside the story and is not objective. He reports not only what the protagonist does but also what she and the people around her think. Some examples:
‘She watched the television a lot […] it was a long way away, in Russia, and they didn’t have proper modern power stations over there…’ (86)
‘People couldn’t understand why she got so upset. They said she shouldn’t be sentimental…’ ( 87)
‘She knew what she was doing. She knew probably nothing would come of what Greg would have referred to as her little venture.’ (95)
Multiplicity of meaning : Multiplicity of meaning Kath’s discourse: the reader feels the protagonist is struggling hard to make sense of reality.
‘I was coming out of a dream, or maybe I was still in it, but I heard the cats, I swear I did. […] By the time I was fully awake there was only the sound of the waves against the hull. I went up…’ (93)
‘I’m sure I’m not alone. I mean, I’m sure everywhere in the world there are people like me. It can’t just be me, just me alone in a boat with two cats and everyone else on dry land shouting silly cow.’ (97) According to this visitor –who seems to be a doctor, Kath is in a kind of hospital for mentally ill people since she suffers from the ‘persistent victim syndrome, PVS’ (112), a psychosomatic disease. According to the visitor ‘those with persistent victim syndrome often experience acute guilt when they finally take flight’ (113). As Kath was suffering, she invented a story –‘the technical term is fabulation’ (114) -to cover the facts she did not know how to accept
Some conclusions… : Some conclusions… ‘A History of the World in Ten and ½ Chapters’ does not hold together, having no main characters or a single plot. Julian Barnes’ masterpiece has many chapters which present different themes and motifs, mostly, taken from history. In particular, he chose Christian religion and western European history as guiding metanarratives for his work.
Although the novel looks like a collection of short stories, it has a conducting thread that is represented through the constant allusions to Noah, the Ark, Mount Ararat, water, boats, verses from the Genesis, and the woodworm.
Each chapter mentions an idea already introduced in the first chapter or it relates to previous or following chapters through repetition or direct references. In almost all the stories, the general setting is on water, whether on a boat or a city near a sea coast.
Slide 20 : In ‘The Survivor’, Fabulation is used not only as part of the doctor’s discourse but also as part of Kath’s way of approaching reality. In chapter IV, Kath Ferris is accused by the doctor of having invented the story about nuclear wars. The story itself mirrors how this devise works at micro and macro perspectives respectively.
Whether the reader believes Kath’s story or the doctor’s from her nightmares there will always be doubts regarding the truthfulness and verisimilitude of each account since both of them present the reader fragments of reality which are relative: nothing is certain.
‘A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters’ is a fragmentary novel since it has chapters that seem unrelated but which have many threads that work as the conducting line of an almost nonexistent plot.
Slide 21 : Thank you very much!
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