The Construction of Heterotopia Space in and Its Dual Effects on Character Creation and Plot Development

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-541-6_59How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Hemingway; Heterotopia; Context analysis

Abstract

In 1927, Hemingway’s short story, The Killer, transforms the story space into a heterotopia through a series of images in the text, which has a profound impact on the characters and plot development. In terms of theory, this study selectively uses Foucault’s classic heterotopia theory. Then, the text reading method is used to pay attention to and record the description of space, time, and environment, and their positions in the article. Focusing on the two core spaces of Henry’s lunch-room and Ole’s room in the novel, this paper analyzes how the three images of counter, clock, and bedroom respectively embody three of the six principles of heterotopia. The study points out that these heterotopia spaces not only break the space-time continuity of reality but also reconstruct the subjectivity of the characters at the psychological and behavioral levels and become the internal driving force to promote the development of the plot. By revealing the deep interaction between spatial structure and narrative dynamics, the contribution of this study is to provide Hemingway’s novels with a relatively novel perspective of the integration of space and narrative, to highlight the significance of the elements behind the dialogue for the development of the novel, and to strengthen the comprehensive understanding of Hemingway and his short stories.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Yachun Xin
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/02/26
TI  - The Construction of Heterotopia Space in and Its Dual Effects on Character Creation and Plot Development
BT  - Proceedings of the 2025 5th International Conference on Culture, Design and Social Development (CDSD 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 534
EP  - 542
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-541-6_59
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-541-6_59
ID  - Xin2026
ER  -