从后殖民主义视角审视电影《英国病人》中的创伤_英语论文

On Trauma in The English Patient From the Perspective of Post-colonialism 

摘要

电影《英国病人》以二战和沙漠为背景，演绎了战争时期在宗主国和殖民地发生的两段不同的爱情悲剧故事。

本课题拟从后殖民主义的视角出发，通过对电影《英国病人》的背景介绍，对主人公的人生遭遇进行分析，结合创伤理论中的文化创伤，解读这些遭遇给他们造成身体和心灵创伤的种种原因。论文认为，爱情的悲剧、道德的谴责、战争的爆发以及民族的隔阂，都是电影里主人公遭受创伤的原因。因此本论文旨在探索后殖民主义给宗主国及其殖民地带来的创伤性影响，得出创伤是难以愈合的，但付出努力去超越民族主义、改变现状，总比什么都不做要好很多的结论。

关键词: 《英国病人》  爱情悲剧  后殖民主义  创伤 

Abstract

The film The English Patient was set in the Second World War and mainly happened in the Sahara Desert, where two love stories went on between protagonists coming from mother countries and their colonies.

This thesis tries to analyze the protagonists’ experiences in the film The English Patient from the perspective of post-colonialism, by introducing its background and explaining several reasons that caused such trauma on them. The thesis holds the view that love tragedy, moral condemnation, two world wars and barriers of nations all lead to the result that protagonists suffered a lot from trauma. So the paper aims to find out what influence is made on people in colonies by the theory of post-colonialism, then get the conclusion that the trauma is hard to cure, but making efforts to transcend nationalism is better than doing nothing to change this situation.

Keywords: The English Patient  love tragedy  post-colonialism  trauma

Contents

1 Introduction 1

1.1 A Brief Introduction to The English Patient 1

1.2 An Introduction to Post-colonism and Research Significance of The English Patient 1

1.3 Thesis Structure 1

2 Literature Review 3

2.1 Researches on Post-colonialism 3

2.2 Researches on Trauma Theory 4

2.3    Researches on The English Patient 5

2.4    A Brief Conclusion to the Literature Review 7

3 Protagonists’ Trauma in The English Patient 8

3.1 Almásy’s Trauma ..8

3.2 Katharine’s Trauma ..8

3.3    Kip’s Trauma ..9

3.4    Hanna’s Trauma ..9

4 Reasons for Protagonists’ Trauma ..10

4.1 Colonialism and the War ..10

4.2 Nationalism ..10

4.3    Moral Condemnation ..11

5   Implications to Current World Cultural Conflicts ..12

5.1    Loss of Identity and People’s Confusion ..12

5.2    Post-colonialism and Feminism ..12

Conclusion ..13

Acknowledgements ..14

References ..15