Transcending The Cultural Limitations

Joyce Carol Oates is a famous contemporary American writer, celebrated for the great productivity and diligence. Her works have received a lot of awards and she has been nominated for Nobel Prize in Literature for several times. Oates is a versatile writer who has published over sixty volumes of novels, short stories, poems and critical views, but her reputation mainly relies on the novels and short stories. They make up most of her productions and reveal her theory of art and full range of artistry. For Oates, art is moral and instructive, and it should truthfully reflect life. Her intention of writing is to reproduce the reality and help the readers better understand their life. Oates is much concerned with the social conditions of her time and her works often reflect the violent and dark side of American life, and people's obsessions of isolation, fear and affliction. But the profound cultural, moral and philosophical implications in the presentation of a realistic life are the central intentions behind her work. Taking her work them as an example, this thesis analyzes Oates's thematic concern in the novel.them, produced in 1969, is considered as Oates's best known and most representative work, and won the National Book Award the second year after its publication. Oates calls this novel a "history in fictional form." It chronicles the life and struggle of the three generations of the Wendall family. Oates portrays in the novel a violent and sordid life filled with murder, rape, riot and disorder, and she dramatizes the nightmarish conditions and sufferings of the lower class people. By illustrating the dark side of the American life, Oates reveals the cultural limitations of the era; by contrasting the different endings of the main characters, she points out the possible ways to transcend and transform the pathological culture.This thesis consists of three parts: introduction, body and conclusion. And the body part is made up of three chapters.Introduction is a brief account of the author, the novel them, the literature reviewand the thesis statement.Chapter one firstly introduces the background information about Joyce Carol Oates and the shaping influence on her as a writer. Then this chapter elaborates her theory of art and the characteristics of writing from three aspects. In addition, this chapter introduces the brief story of the novel them and the perspective of the study.Chapter Two mainly analyzes Oates's view of the cultural limitations and their exhibition in the novel. The Renaissance "ego-consciousness" is one of the "holiest myths" of Western culture. Growing out of the "I" and "not-I" dualism, it has dominated Western thought for centuries. This concept of "self may have been healthy at one time, but in the present era it has its limitations and becomes "pathological." These cultural limitations cause a lot of problems in the American society: the violent and unfair hierarchical society, the alienated and isolated self, and the deteriorating human relationships.Chapter Three focuses on Oates's exploration of the possible ways to transform and transcend the cultural limitations in the novel. One way is to replace the "ego consciousness" with the "communal consciousness" to break down the dikes between people and to establish connectedness. This is mainly reflected in Oates's ideal of discarding prejudice and establishing "a single human family" in the novel. The other way is the assertion of human instinct and the catharsis of the human passion. There are two forms of passion in the novel: love and violence, through which people may rediscover themselves, achieve unity with others and change the social reality. Though Oates objects to the violent social conditions, she affirms the lower people's resistance against the unfair society through violence at the end of the novel.Conclusion restates the thesis statement and points out the limitations of the author's artistic form and idea in them.