| Summary: | 博士 === 國立成功大學 === 外國語文學系碩博士班 === 100 === War is ideally a means to achieve justice and peace; yet, in killing and blood sacrifice, the nature of war frequently betrays the fundamental of both ethics and humanity. The paradox between justice and violence presents an opportunity for an intertwined study of contemporary philosophy and literature, a study which satisfy an urgent need for scholarly intervention and debate. This dissertation situates Tim O’Brien’s Vietnam War narratives alongside Emmanuel Levinas’s notion of the “face” of the Other. It explores the various face-to-face encounters in O’Brien’s novels and the resulting ethical problems. Through examining the tension inherent in war and ethics, the current study seeks to introduce the possibilities of responding to the Other more ethically. O’Brien’s novels, read individually, are about soldiers’ quest to make the right/ethical choices in life. However, read collectively, O’Brien’s works deal with ethical encounters in all aspects in life. The reality of war, as depicted in O’Brien’s novels, enables us a rare moment to focus on Levinas’s difficult commandment of ethical behavior in situations of extreme, unrelenting inhumanity. Therefore, this dissertation attempts to answer the following: How does one answer the community’s call to fight in a war? When facing the enemy, is it possible to reconcile the attainment of justice and the ethics of “Thou Shalt not Kill”? What good does one respond to the ghosts of the dead and how does on face the trauma of war? How are the constructions of masculinity and femininity affected by war, and how does one rebuild an ethical gender relationship after the war? Through examining the contributions and limitations of Levinasian ethics and O’Brien’s narratives, this dissertation hopes to add to the understanding of face-to-face ethics, not only in the context of war but also in various aspects of life.
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