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An Ancient Way to New Freedom

Author: GaoHuiLian
Tutor: JiShengLei
School: Hebei Normal
Course: English Language and Literature
Keywords: Sufism empty equilibrium integration rebirth
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Type: Master's thesis
Year: 2011
Downloads: 33
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Abstract

Doris Lessing is a British woman writer who is regarded as one of the most excellent post-war novelists. She has gained her fame for her dedicated half century’s writing about her times. Lessing is both a complex and a prolific writer, and she keeps moving and searching for new possibilities in the future. She is bold to explore ideas which have made her novel deserve the attention of all readers and critics.Lessing is a seeker who is not afraid to question the status quo and to try out new ways of seeking the ultimate truth. She at no point asserts that through her study of Sufism she has abandoned concepts or beliefs which inform her earlier fiction. To Lessing, Sufi philosophy is one which opens the individual to a new way of looking at things. Sufism enabled her to offer more faith and hope in her novels than she was able to before. She has departed radically from the secularized world-view of the twentieth West. This distinguishes her novels from those of most of her Western contemporaries.Lessing sees that it is only in the fullest development and balancing of all available faculties that human beings can free themselves from mere predetermined repetition and so evade catastrophe. For her, the Sufi evolutionary methods provide the means that could help people transcend their limited cognitive capacity as a key to a fuller understanding of reality. The Memoirs of a Survivor is one of Lessing’s most famous masterpieces. The novel was published in 1974, and it demonstrates the philosophical ideas and imaginative power of the author. It has aroused a number of comments and discussions which has viewed it as an autobiography of the author. The significance of the novel has, however, gone far beyond that.The novel is both a warning to us and a promise to better things in the future if only we mend our ways. Lessing engages us in an inevitable process of change simply by the fact that we are reading her novel and attempting to solve its mysteries and resolve its paradoxes. In this novel, Lessing’s employ of Sufism constitutes an attempt at transcending ordinary limitations by integrating facets of a variety of conceptual traditions. The focus of this paper is to explore in detail the mystical dimensions of the novel. That is the way of Sufism. The characters in the novel stand for a return from exile. It is not about personal withdrawal from society; it is about being inside society, but seeing the significance of the total situation. To Lessing, freedom comes from encumbrances, from taking others on, seeing others through—and opportunities present themselves in strange places. Often what looks like a burden turns out to be a blessing. Therefore, Lessing’s characters learn that freedom requires long, arduous process, not only of working it through but of seeing others through.In the light of Sufism, the protagonist has groped her way in her daily life through the real world and the world behind the wall. Due to her great efforts, through the special way of meditation and contemplation in Sufis, a balance has been made in her mind between her inner and outer world. The egg image becomes particularly important in the last phase, since it culminates the novel and leads the way to final rebirth. The triumph of the novel is that the protagonist, other than Lessing’s other characters, succeeds in leaving her past behind finally, and gained rebirth. The greatness of the author is that she endows the protagonist Sufi philosophy, which functions as a guide-leader, leads both the protagonist and her readers to accomplish this Sufi journey. This is Lessing’s first book to boast a joyful ending.

An Ancient Way to New Freedom

Abstract

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