ABSTRACT
In her Booker Prize-winning novel, The Sea, The Sea (1978), Iris Murdoch displays morality and ethics through her characters’ intersubjective relationships. The implied ethics in each character’s relation toward the other is akin to the Levinasian ethics. Although various studies have been done on this contemporary novel, it has not been analyzed through the Levinasian ethical lens. Emmanuel Levinas tries to decipher his ethical notions using figurative language, especially metaphors. He compares responsibility, substitution, and suffering for the Other to the state of ‘maternity’. This paper will argue that the narrative explores this ethical notion of ‘maternity’ through an implied comparison between all female and two male characters. Both sexes are included since the other aim of this research is to prove Levinasian ‘maternity’ to be a gender-neutral trope applicable to both women and men. This research will be done by the help of C.Fred Alford’s critical comparative essay, since we aim to contribute to the ongoing attempt to perceive Levinas’s ethical notions through a detailed analysis of one of Murdoch’s ethical narratives, The Sea, The Sea. Although we share a common goal with Alford, this paper is a complement to, as well as a critique of his essay.
References
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