The fiction of the contemporary British novelist Iris Murdoch hinges on the successful mingling between the epistemological and philosophical on the one hand and the artistic and aesthetic on the other. There is an overriding and recurrent postulate in her fiction: the disparity between one's conscious and deliberate plans and what one eventually achieves. This philosophical view forms the constituent elements of two of her famous novels, The Bell (1958) and The Sea, The Sea (1978). This study explores the problematics of how this leitmotif is manifested in these two novels and the mechanism of showing that as well as the salient characteristics of her art and writing.
Sabbar S. Sultan