Strife And Alienation

Joyce Carol Oates(1938-) is one of the most prolific and versatile contemporary writers in America.She has published myriad novels,poetry,and plays,as well as books and articles of criticism.In these works,Oates focuses on what she views as the spiritual,sexual,and intellectual decline of modern American society.Employing a dense,elliptical prose style,she depicts such cruel and macabre actions as rape,incest, murder,child abuse,and suicide to delineate the forces of evil with which individuals must contend.As a realistic novel and one of the masterpieces of the author,them reflects the psychological progress of the people of the lower class in American society from the great depression of 1930s to the turbulence of 1960s.In their pursuit of material life as well as spiritual comfort,they undergo many hardships and confront with the multiple pressures from family,society and even themselves.By employing the concepts and theories of psychoanalysis,this thesis aims to uncover the way in which Oates exposes the existential predicament of the modern people.The focus of the thesis is on Jules's fantasy and frustration in familial and social life and on the reasons for his tragedy.This thesis consists of five parts.The first part contains a brief introduction on Oates's works as well as the literature review on her novel them.Basing on the previous criticism on this novel,this thesis proposes Fromm's theory of alienation and the concept of community in order to interpret the novel from a new perspective. Through the study of the protagonist's unhappy familial life and perplexity towards social life,this thesis attempts to reveal the universal predicament of modern people.Chapter One lays emphasis on two stages in which young Jules Wendall quests for personal longings.The first stage is Jules's early years in the rural area as a little boy.During this period,he is searching for freedom by running away from home more than once.He longs to reach somewhere distant.Yet,he is left confused while staying with his family with no way out.The runaway action is his first try for a better life.The second stage is his teenage years during which he experiences a move to the urban city and suffers from great dilemma due to the big contrast between the chaotic urban life and the peaceful rural life.Obsessed from his childhood with personal longings,he increasingly falls into the strong desire of owning a sum of wealth and an ideal lover.Disappointed with his dysfunctional family,he sees himself as a self-made man and turns to himself for a successful future.Ever since his childhood, he has been obsessed with the fantasies that he is the central characters of a novel who makes fortune and capable of realizing his ambitious plans step by step.He,indeed, meets some adventures in different phases of his life.Actually,they are masked by benefactor,in practice,they prove to be unreliable.Suffered from one attack after another,Jules becomes numb with spiritual alienation.Chapter Two concentrates on the conflicts of Jules and his family members. This chapter is divided into three parts.Part one mainly provides an analysis of Jules's pursuit for paternal love and his relationship with his fathers.An inheritor of his biological father,he has to stay with his actual father while he dreams to have an ideal father.Part two demonstrates that,in his insatiable quest for maternal love,Jules Wendall transfers his mother-seeking towards his lover—Nadine in order to realize a particular kind of compensatory satisfaction.The more maternal affection he expects from his lover,the deeper he is trapped into disillusion that leads to his psychological alienation of mother image in ideal and reality.Part three gives a general presentation of the alienated sibling relationship in the novel.This part analyzes on the one hand the sibling's hunger for emotional connections,which provide with them support and security;and on the other hand,however hard they try to fulfill this,impotently the siblings face no choice but to isolate with each other in the struggle for everyday survival under the influence of the brutal environment.Chapter Three,with an elaboration of the dramatic representation of alienation and absence of community in the city,analyzes Jules Wendall's struggle and disillusion in his social life.He cannot find identification with himself in the hostile city which does not provide any chance for him to be a better man.What is more,the absence of community in the city makes his strife become hopeless,drives him into the state of alienation.Opposing against the brutal surroundings,he turns to violent behavior for the spiritual rescue.Yet,since violence derives from a sense of impotence,it cannot protect him from being alienated.Born in a lower class,however hard he tries,Jules becomes powerless in front of the relentless society and doomed to be a tragedy.As the main body of this thesis,the three chapters unite and correlate with each other.The whole thesis interprets fully the relevant theories of alienation and community which leads to a sound conclusion.It summarizes the analysis by pointing out the significance of the study.By portraying in the novel a whole picture of an ordinary boy with fantasy and disillusion,depression and alienated mind in the unremitting pursuit for an idealized familial and social life,Oates gives us a deep insight into the existential predicament of people as a whole in the contemporary world.