小说《封闭的木窗》解析

王瀚霆

2017年7月，作为美国The Potters School的一名12年级学生，作者在芝加哥大学选修了英语系暑期大学本科课程“19世纪英美哥特文学”。在这门课程中，William Veeder教授讲述了如何将精读用于进阶文学分析。作者以Amrbose Bierce的短篇小说“The Boarded Window”为研究对象，在期末论文中对小说中的主题、人物、细节、对话和象征符号等作出了多层次的深度解析，并拿到了A的评分。以下为论文全文，希望能给大学生在论文写作方面提供一些思路和启发。

In “The Boarded Window，” Ambrose Bierce utilized his superior control of language to create a story with two layers of meaning. On the surface， the narrator recounted a rather straightforward tale. A man， having failed to save his wife from illness， did not bury her on time. This action resulted in heavy damage to his wifes dead body. This additional failure filled the man with guilt for the rest of his miserable life. However， under the genius facade（表面）， Bierce， through specific word choices， symbols， and even overly conspicuous attempts to downplay in the passage， discloses an underlying theme of male-female conflict， or， more specifically， the resistance of Murlocks wife to the attempts to completely own and control her body by her husband till death.

To conceal the intended message， Bierce， through the persona of the narrator， creates an outer layer of narration that is hard to penetrate at first sight. “One day Murlock returned from gunning in a distant part of the forest to find his wife prostrate（病倒的）with fever， and delirious（神志不清的）. There was no physician within miles， no neighbor； nor was she in a condition to be left， to summon help.” However， beyond offering the straightforward statement， the above lines have a deeper structural function. The narrator， before this line， mainly centered his writing around his own experience as an eyewitness. Now， as his knowledge of Murlock becomes insufficient in continuing the passage， the narrator as to rely on his grandfathers memory. “From what we know of a nature like his we may venture to sketch in some of the details of the outline picture drawn by my grandfather.” Insignificant this statement may appear to be， it reveals the narrators absolute control over the details from this point onward.

Through an unperturbed（平靜的）， unemphatic tone constructed by specific word choices， the narrator attempts to conceal the perplexing（令人困惑的）details. “So he set about the task of nursing her back to health， but at the end of the third day she fell into unconsciousness and so passed away， apparently， with never a gleam of returning reason.” Most obviously，to nurse a critically ill individual without professional knowledge is foolish to say the least despite the fact that“there was no physician within miles.” Also， with mid-19th wagon and horseback， an individual could travel up to 10 miles a day， even in forests， without difficulty. In three days needed for the illness to kill the wife， Murlock could have easily received assistance from a nearby settlement， village， or town. Yet， the narrator shrewdly manipulates diction to deemphasize（不再给予强调）the perturbing nature of Murlocks lack of action. The “so” at the start of the sentence was used to force a cause-effect relationship between the wifes illness and the husbands care in order to induce the readers to overlook the suspicious details. The “but” that connects the two independent clauses serve the same purpose. The most expected outcome of caring a critically-ill individual without expertise would be the death of the patient， but the conjunction implicitly suggests that situation normal would instead be the recovery of the wife. The “apparently” mechanically inserted in the sentence reveals the narrators attempt to cover up Murlocks misjudgment of his wifes death.