This thesis examines how Chang-rae Lee's A Gesture Life (1999) represents the issues of war crimes. Writing the comfort women issue, Lee handles the bitter history of the Second World War in a postmodernist way. Against the modernist perspective on war history that draws on a simple and moral conclusion, Lee's writing underscores the function of narrative and the influence of trauma in the representation of the war crime. It offers a literary approach to the issue that complicates the role of the perpetrator and the victim, thus distances itself from the common understanding of war crimes. I argue this literary representation of the history of war crimes could be more powerful than historical writings, because it will ultimately challenge the concept of war itself.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uiowa.edu/oai:ir.uiowa.edu:etd-1805 |
| Date | 01 May 2010 |
| Creators | Wang, Ying-bei |
| Contributors | Wittenberg, David |
| Publisher | University of Iowa |
| Source Sets | University of Iowa |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Theses and Dissertations |
| Rights | Copyright 2010 Ying-bei Wang |
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