| Susan Sontag (1933-2004) was a famous contemporary American critic, literary theorist, and the leader of the American avant-garde theory. Nevertheless, a wide range of interest can be found in the life track of this passionate lady of Susan Sontag, which includes literature, philosophy, politics, photography, film and popular culture. She is regarded as the most important contemporary female intellectual in the West together with Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) and Hannah Arendt (1906-1975). Meanwhile, Sontag is also an outstanding novelist in America. Looking through her two early novels,a number of themes stand out, among which the loss of identity, loneliness and suffering are major ones. These themes reflected the lonely, painful and lost state of the young generation after World War II. The characters in the two novels inevitably influence each individual's life and attitude toward self and the world. All of them feel lonely, helpless and aimless. Although they are fighting for something that they believe may bring them a world of freedom and spirit,they all feel disappointed and find nothing but death.This paper intends to analyze the three major themes in her two early novels The Benefactor and Death Kit for the fulfillment of the spiritual project she set for her time through using Freud's psychoanalytic approach, Marx's alienation theory, and Sartrean Existentialism.This thesis consists of introduction, main body and conclusion.The introduction part first presents a brief introduction to the life of Susan Sontag which embodies her whole life experience and literary career. Then it gives a general literature review of Susan Sontag and her achievements. And finally it expounds the structure and significance of this thesis. In the first chapter by using the theory of conscious and unconscious of Freudianism, this thesis presents the narratives of The Benefactor and Death Kit that move around the dreams of the protagonists. In order to shake off the shackles laid on them by the institutionalized society, both protagonists, Hippolyte and Diddy, live more in fantasy than in the actual world. For them, life is a psychic existence in an importance sense. The dreams comprise a psychic drama which provides a stage for many of the problems and people of the protagonists'past to engage each other. Through the analysis of the exploration of identity with dreams, it shows the protagonists'alienation and suffering which illuminates the themes in the two novels.Chapter Two focuses on the issues of the estrangement and despair based on the theory of alienation proposed by Karl Marx, with the intent to examine the reasons for protagonists'alienation in the social system. The system of capitalist society leads to two problems: first, in the labor division—individuals are detached from totality, and they can find their identity only in the totality. Second, private ownership causes fierce competition so that social Darwinism prevails in the capitalist society. But the goal of civilization is to eliminate the doctrine of survival of the fittest and fulfill humanistic morality. The protagonists take great pains in adapting themselves to that social system with their struggle of self-exploration.Chapter Three presents the theme of people's suffering in the alienated society with Sartre's existential points in the two novels. On the one hand, the protagonists try to shatter off the bondage of social convention; on the other hand, they seem to conform to the potential rule of the society. So they have doubt about their identity all the time. These two novels reveal the pain of lives and the spirit of endurance. According to Sartre, a free man has to take social responsibility. Otherwise, no matter what he does—whether he behaves as a weapon for aggressive self-assertion, or hides behind norms and reason, he will live in bad faith and lose self-identity. Therefore the morbid action of the protagonists including mimesis and suicide, are the results of losing their self-identity. Chapter Four conveys Sontag's belief in form with their special anti-interpretation designs and innovative novelistic techniques. She has purposely constructed The Benefactor to defy any definite mythic or psychological interpretation. In Death Kit, there are abundant examples of ingenuity which combine the techniques in film-making with novel, and a range of innovative techniques to refresh the reader's perception on the novel. Her New-Sensibility theory enlightens our consideration of human nature, promotes our understanding of human nature, and offers an important view of theory to estimate the post-modernist culture.In the conclusion, this thesis points out that although the novels lack integrated events, they reflect some aboriginal disaster of the twentieth century—moral degeneracy. Love is the soul of morality, but in the fierce competition of modern American society, love is sadly neglected and therefore can no longer hold people together, which results in social alienation. Based on the previous illustration and analysis in each chapter, a conclusion is drawn that Sontag expressed her deep concern with human-beings from the perspective of irrational thinking, i.e. philosophical and psychoanalytical perspective in her novels which can help to reengage readers in the appreciation of the fiction of Susan Sontag.
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