OVERCOMING THE BOUNDARIES OF EVERYDAYNESS IN NIALL GRIFFITHS`S NOVEL «STUMP»

Abstract

The paper presents the research of poetics of the fourth novel «Stump» (2004) written by contemporary Welsh Anglophone author Niall Griffiths. The early works of Niall Griffiths have long been associated with the off-center tendency in contemporary British fiction, with novels written by Scottish authors such as Irvine Welsh, James Kelman, John King. This study attempts to demonstrate that Welsh writer doesn’t merely articulate the problems of the fringe groups of the society as well as shocking and taboo topics. Also to overcome the common postcolonial approach to Griffiths`s works which focuses on the concepts of «colonial othering», «forms of disability» etc. in the novels, the author of the article proposes the existential philosophy as methodological basis for this research. The study concentrates over the central problem of the human Being-in-the-world, the human life in the world of everydayness in Griffiths`s novel «Stump». Understanding «the everyday life», «everydayness» as common, routine life, full of daily automatic human actions (according to B. Waldenfels) the author aims to consider the boundaries of everyday life and the experience of overcoming the borders of everydayness in the novel discussed.The analysis demonstrates that narrative structure of the novel combines several modes and forms of narration. Interior monologue with steam of consciousness fragments is the form of representing the first plot line focusing on the one day of nameless recovering alcoholic who has lost his left arm to gangrene. «Style indirect libre» in first person plural form is used to finish each of the chapter devoted to one-armed hero and expresses his contradictory point of view on the «12 steps addiction recovery» program. The non-diegetic impersonal narrator (according to V. Shmid classification) introduces the second plot line devoted to the two gangsters who have set out from Liverpool on a mission to find and punish the one-armed man for a past misdeed. Their continual dialog sometimes is interrupted by the omnipresent narrator voice who conveys in form of indirect speech one of the gangster`s thoughts and his perceptive and ideological «point of view». A Griffiths`s fictional space can be divided on close/open, secular/sacral, everyday/non-everyday types. In the novel Wales natural world is opposed to any closed and narrow spaces. One-armed protagonist fills himself free and happy in the open space, where he communicates with birds, animals and meets a pantheistic God. Oppositely, two gangsters are afraid of open space in the middle of dangerous nature of Wales, when they leave native Liverpool. Having the works of K. Jaspers and M. Merleau-Ponty as the basis for our research, we conclude that the body for one-armed hero is an existential and temporal border, which transforms each moment of his life into an endless «boundary situation» (germ. Grenzsituation, according to K. Jaspers). A journey to unknown Wales gives a start to personal transformations for one of the gangsters – Alastair. Crossing the geographical border becomes a time of «boundarysituation» in Alastair`s existence. Consequently, the motives of the real Being, existential self-identity, meeting with the transcendent are concerned with the experience of overcoming the everydayness, crossing its boundaries.