Tragedies of Life and Death in Victoria Hislop’s Novel The Island

Abstract

Victoria Hislop (1959- ) is a famous English writer in the 20th century. She enjoys a good reputation for her graceful style of writing and fresh and moving stories. Victoria Hislop’s The Island is her first long novel. It takes Petrakis family’s three generations’ different life experiences after they suffered from leprosy as the main line, telling a tragic story. This thesis is based on The Island and mainly discusses about Petrakis family’s four women’s different life tragedies. It aims at exploring the life tragedies caused by social group’s discrimination against lepers in that time. Therefore, it can further discuss the influence of human nature and humanistic ideas on man’s life experiences.

In order to achieve the above objectives, this thesis is divided into four chapters to analyses main characters’ different personalities and their different life experiences after they experienced the threat of leprosy. The first chapter expounds four kinds of definitions of tragedy, and the harm of leprosy and possible tragedies caused by leprosy. The second chapter uses Schopenhauer’s and Aristotle’s theory of tragedy to analyze two female characters Eleni’s and Maria’s life tragedy in this novel. The third chapter uses Hegel’s theory of tragedy to discuss about the other female characters Anna’s and Sophia’s tragic experiences in this novel. The last chapter uses Nietzsche’s theory of tragedy to analyze Hislop’s reflection of humanistic idea and human nature in this novel. By analyzing this novel, this thesis concludes that through character development and portray of tragedy, Hislop reveals the social groups’ discrimination against lepers in that time, and lepers’ suffering and despair under discrimination; Hislop expresses her concern about the mental states and life choices of lepers who are forgotten and marginalized by society.  

Key words:Victoria Hislop; The Island; tragedy; human nature; humanistic idea