"The Tremendous Pounding of My Own Blood": Structure, Themes, and the Historical Consciousness of Alice Munro's The View from Castle Rock

Abstract

This thesis takes as its main purpose the exploration of Alice Munro's short story collection The View from Castle Rock. In this study, my main interest is to examine the historical consciousness of Castle Rock through an analysis of various narrative elements of the text. This thesis will bring together an analytical reading of the structural elements of the short stories, as well as performing close readings of the narratives in the collection. Through such an examination, it is my intention to better understand the text's relationship and engagement with history and narrativity. The examination of Castle Rock's historical consciousness is at the center of this thesis' academic interests. Historical consciousness is, as I define it, a text's representation and interpretation of the historical past; the manner in which a text decides to engage with the historical past, through different narrative devices, structural methods, and thematic concerns. In other words, the historical consciousness is defined by how a text decides to engage with, represent, and perceive the historical past. The importance of understanding a text's historical consciousness is to me self-evident, as our understanding of the past often regulates how we act and shape the future. In this thesis, the focus of my analysis will be centered on the structural elements of narration, focalization, and other aspects related to perspective. Through such an exploration of structural aspects of the stories in Castle Rock, I will demonstrate some key aspects of the historical consciousness of the short story collection. My close reading of the short stories in this collection will focus on examining the recurring themes in the stories and how these thematic concerns relate to the overall narrative form of Castle Rock. It is my argument in this thesis that through this process of investigating Castle Rock, one can better understand the historical consciousness of this short story collection, and that such a reading of the text is beneficial to the study of Alice Munro's fiction in general.