Harasemiuc Rebeca CCB 1st year

Devices of deconstructing identity in: The Wasp Factory and Night Train
According to Jacques Derrida, deconstruction needs to create new terms, not to synthesize the concepts in opposition, but to mark their difference and eternal interplay, to be effective. Deconstruction is considered to be another manifestation of mans Rebellion. Moreover, the primary goal of deconstruction is to examine binary oppositions, such as the relationship between two parts that are opposite in meaning, and to examine their differences. As far as I am concerned, for me, deconstruction means constructing a new or the real meaning of a term; think about deconstructing the term deconstruction. I thought about this relating to Franks words: All our lives are symbols. Everything we do is part of a pattern we have at least some say in. [] The Wasp Factory is part of the pattern because it is part of life and even more sopart of death. Like life it is complicated, so all the components are there. The reason it can answer questions is because every question is a start looking for an end, and the Factory is about the End death, no less.1 To begin with, I consider that the title of the novel can be perceived as a way of deconstructing the meaning of the term wasp2. I was wondering if we may think about US as a factory which uses the assembly line to produce the wasps. The chief objective of Banks narrative is a deconstruction of traditional gender formations that present themselves as a manifestation of a congenital inevitability. I have read this novel as a journey of ones terrifying psychopath, who hopes to become a human being. Because he was gelded in a dog attack as a child he has serious problems, he is an isolated person with sever identity issues. The Wasp Factory releases its central characters Frank and Eric into a fluidity of identities different from the natural gender identities. The most significant device in
1 2

Banks Iain, The Wasp Factory, Chapter 7, p. 42 Wasp= a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant; a member of the privileged, established white upper middle class in the U.S.; http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/wasp

Harasemiuc Rebeca CCB 1st year

deconstructing Franks identity is presented in the novels climax, when Frank realizes that he has lived his whole life in drag: Im not Francis Leslie Cauldhame. Im Frances Lesley Cauldhame. Thats what it boils down to. The tampons and the hormones were for me.(idem p.44) He believes in his own mythology and considers himself unique and special. Martin Amiss Night Train is a story consisting on three different stories. If we take taking into account Derridas words, the story shows how the detective is grabbed by her investigation. It seems impossible to identify the reasons why that girl is dead. Because of this impossibility, we may argue that Amis points at some of the terrifying effects of our postmodern culture, which are the absence of meaning to explain action, in the old logical systems used in the past .Night Train can be considered a terrible piece of detective fiction. Apparently, it follows none of the rules of hard boiled crime writing, and does so self-consciously. It seems Amis has crafted a book that is clever rather than wry, moody rather than atmospheric, and confounding rather than mysterious. The she detective Mike is the ambiguous presence in the novel. She is many times taken for a man. She lives in her own world with her own thoughts and ideas. Moreover, in the end, she feels Jennifer is inside her.3 To sum up, the books mentioned above, The Wasp Factory and Night Train are postmodern writings in which deconstruction, and especially that of identity, is at home. Both personages suffer from gender identity, have ideas opposed to reality and live in their own world. They seem to manifest their reality in reality. The challenging question here is what is the true reality? As for me, I strongly believe that identity, depending on which side you are, can work for and against you.

Rangu, Gabriela Identity as a set of decoys in Martin Amis`s Night Train