An Analysis Of The Themes Of Joyce Carol Oates's Novel---them

Joyce Carol Oates is an outstanding modem American novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright, critic, and editor. She is made the candidate for the Nobel Prize of Literature for several times. Her fiction mainly describes the tragic characters in the tragic American society. Oates was awarded the National Book Award in 1970 for her masterpiece?them. The author of this thesis, Through a comprehensive analysis of the portrayal of the protagonists, tries to illustrate the themes of Qates抯 novel them in order to let people better understand modem American society. In the novel, them, or in almost all of Oates抯 works, there are three themes: woman, violence, and community. Her women are victims of social and economic forces. They are victimized physically and psychologically by both men and the world. Most of them seek fulfilment through sexual relationships, or marriage and motherhood, but they fail unavoidably. Just as in them, the mother--- Lorreta, and the daughter--- Maureen in them. Oates抯 fiction world is violent, full of nightmare. By describing violence, Oates wants us to be aware of the darkest side of the society and therefore to form a new consciousness and self-affirmation. Violence becomes a means of asserting oneself and of triumphing our personal impotence, which are fully embodied in the son, Jules in them. The third theme is loss of community which is the cause of modem tragedy and violence in the society. Oates examines the consequences of this loss through the pages of her fiction. Th?society is full of mobility, and the failure to communicate with others. So the city is considered as a jungle and a waste land. ii Urban Crisis: An Analysis of the Themes of Joyce Carol Oates抯 Novel-梩hem I Oates抯 theory of art, is, by describing these themes, to raise the consciousness of her readers and to urge them on to the goal of affirmation and celebration of life. And at the end of them, Oates provides us a solution to the social tragedy and violence, that is, to destroy the city by fire, which contains the phoenix image: to bum down everything in the city and to build a new city with a new life from its ruins, which shares some similarity with I. S. Eliot抯 The Waste Land.