CHARACTER ENLIGHTENMENT IN IRIS MURDOCH’S RETROSPECTIVE FICTION
CHARACTER ENLIGHTENMENT IN IRIS MURDOCH’S RETROSPECTIVE FICTION

Summary/Abstract: My paper focuses on whether three representative first-person narrators from British author Iris Murdoch’s fiction reach a degree of enlightenment. The narrating selves move between a past experience and a present experience in an attempt to build a clearer sense of identity. The more the narrating I distances itself from the experiencing I, claiming a different stand to his past behaviour, the more dissonant the relationship between the two is. The narrating self’s disproval of past conduct produces a regenerative effect on the character healing his to a certain extent from moral ailments as egoism, pride and tyrany. The more alike the narrating I is to the experiencing self, the more their relationship is one of consonance. Iris Murdoch’s reminiscing first-person characters illustrate a mix of consonant and disonant relationships reaching enlightenment only half-way. Having overcome moral struggles, they become more modest in their demands of themselfves and of others, but they still glimpse back at a semi-obscure past which they can’t fully comprehend.

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