An Analysis Of The Theme Related To Predicament In Wonderland

Joyce Carol Oates (1938- ) is a productive and versatile writer in contemporary American Literature. Oates's major fictional concern is on the conflict between the individual and his social environment. She shows her overwhelming fascination with the phenomenon of contemporary America: its colliding social and economic forces, its philosophical contradiction, in which individuals are often subjected to the dislocation and suffer extreme psychological turmoil. Oates's particular genius consists in her ability to convey the psychological states with real fidelity, and to relate the intense private experiences of her characters to the larger realities of American life, so as to present the living predicament of the individual as results of the social and economic pressures.In Wonderland, Oates focuses on some essential problems that modern people would face during the social development. Employing the realistic techniques, she vividly portrays American historical vicissitude from the Great Depression to the 1970s. A victim of the social milieu, Jesse suffers self-loss during the Depression. In order to regain his selfhood and attempt to search for the self-actualization, he strives to find connection with the world in the seething, vibrate"Wonderland". To survive, he has to constantly transform himself spiritually, psychologically and intellectually. He adopts the strategies of self-change, self-negation, self-control, and self-aggrandizement for the sake of adapting himself to the new conditions. In his self-actualizing Journey, he encounters many fatherly figures---grandfather Vogel, Dr. Pedersen, Dr. Cady and Dr. Perrault---who offer respectively solipsism, megalomania, empiricism, behaviorism as solutions to the problems of existence. These ideas represent the distorted sense of self. Under these influences, Jesse's self-fulfillment becomes impossible. Contrarily, that would lead him into a more embarrassed and solitude situation.Besides unfolding Jesse's predicament, Oates also concerns existence situation of her female characters. Through presenting their existence predicament, Oates aims at criticizing the patriarchal society's discrimination against and depreciation of women, suppression of the development of their personality as well as distortion of their humanity. This concern reflects Oates's distinctive social moral value as a serious writer.In Wonderland, Oates not only voices her characters'predicament, but implicitly conveys her own predicament as a writer. As the"intermediary chapter", Wonderland signifies an artistic and psychological turning point in Oates's fictional canon. In her early works, Oates just purely dramatizes nightmarish social phenomena, stresses the function of violence on settling the contradiction between individual and society. With the completion of Wonderland, Oates attempts to transcend her previous literary pattern and move toward a more articulate moral position. After the completion of Wonderland, Oates realizes that she couldn't resolve the moral questions it raises and that failure distresses her.