摘 要

玛格丽特•劳伦斯是加拿大近代著名的女性作家之一。本文所探讨的《潜水鸟》是她的马那卡纳系列中的一篇。作者真实又细腻地刻画了皮格特的女性形象， 体现了她一生坎坷的经历。皮格特在白人主流社会中挣扎，最终却遭遇了家破人亡的悲惨结局。

本文从皮格特的悲剧入手，着重分析了造成皮格特悲剧的原因。通过探讨， 我们得出以下结论：皮格特是被边缘化的少数民族成员之一。由于殖民化以及世界民权运动的发展，使她拥有了反抗的意识。但是，又由于种族歧视的大环境的影响，加上皮格特自身的经济原因以及自我心理原因，导致了她最终悲剧的发生。她的悲剧揭露了白人主流文化对少数民族的压迫，所以我们需要怀有包容各种文化的胸怀和善良之心，而少数民族人民则需要珍视自己的文化，并朝正确的方向去努力。

关键词：《潜水鸟》；皮格特；种族歧视；悲剧；原因分析

目录

1. Introduction 1
2. Demonstration 2
   1. Background information 2
      1. Social conditions at that time 2
         1. Effects of colonization 2
         2. World civil rights movement and the climax of feminism 3
      2. Margaret Laurence’s purpose in writing The Loons 3
      3. The tragedy of Piquette 4
   2. Analysis of the reasons for the tragedy of Piquette 4
      1. Social reasons 4
         1. Racial discrimination 4
         2. Gender inequality 5
      2. Economic reasons 5
         1. Poor family environment 5
         2. Low education level 6
      3. Psychological reasons 6
         1. Being guarded and masked in childhood 6
         2. Trying vainly to change her fate in adulthood 7
      4. Implications 7
         1. Accommodate multiple cultures 7
         2. Cherish your own culture 8
         3. Strive in the right direction 9
         4. Have a kind heart 9
3. Conclusion 10

Works Cited 11

Bibliography 1

Cause Analysis of the Tragedy of Piquette in The Loons

Introduction

Margaret Laurence, a famous Canadian Renaissance novelist, was born in 1926 in a small grassland town in Canada. When she got married, she went to England and Africa to live because of her husband's work. Her active writing period was in the 1960s and 1970s, and she was good at describing various folk customs and human feelings as well as people's sufferings. From her novels, one can always realize that the life of the vulnerable groups in this society is not easy and difficult. At the same time, one can also feel the author's true feelings and inner desire for struggle against unfairness in this society. Margaret Laurence's most famous novel series is the Manawaka Series. This paper is about The Loons, a short story selected from this series. The Loons is excerpted from A Bird in the House, a series of Manawaka novels, which uses the first person, Vanessa, to tell the story of a Meti girl named Piquette who lives in a reserve area. Against the background of multi-cultural integration, it reveals the hard survival of minorities and marginalized vulnerable groups through the life experience of Piquette. The heroine in the story is a microcosm of this group. Similarly, the title of The Loons symbolizes Piquette's own tragic experience. Like the loons, she finally vanished..

There are many foreign studies on Margaret Laurence, the author of this story.

The most famous one is a collection called Critical Approaches to the Fiction of Margaret Laurence. This book collects critics' comments on the 20th century novelists from Europe, the United States and Canada. This book also describes the criticism and evaluation of Margaret Laurence's works on different aspects of history, feminism, descriptiveness and theme. The researches on Margaret Laurence in Chinese academia began in early 2000, and mostly started with feminism. In addition, domestic research on The Loons has gradually increased in recent years, such as Wang Huan's interpretation of The Loons from ecofeminism and Sheng Liping's interpretation of

the female narrative voice of The Loons. All of these provide valuable research materials for this paper.