The Theme Of Pursuit In American Novels During The 1950s

The Theme of Pursuit novels appeared in the American literature between the end of World War Two and early 1960s.This paper focuses on three iconic books in this literature, namely The Catcher in the Rye, One the Road and Rabbit, Run. It uses the theory of Archetypal Criticism, the Theorem of Narration and the Post-Modernism Theory to uncover the new features in characters, theme and narration compared with the traditional novels.The paper is divided into three parts, i.e. the introduction, the main discussion and the conclusion.The introduction starts with introducing the definition of the theme of pursuit in American novels during the 1950s as well as the social background. It then briefly reviews the domestic literature on three landmark books in this topic, namely The Catcher in the Rye, One the Road, and Rabbit, Run. It ends with explaining the value added on the literature by the present paper.The main discussion includes three chapters. Using the theory of Archetypal Criticism, the first chapter compares the heroic character represented by the traditional novels with the anti-heroic character described by the works of the Theme of Pursuit during the 1950s. The main attention is given to how the latter rebels and deconstructs the former. The second chapter first analyzes how the ancient religion belief corrupts among the mind of modern population and how the mainstream consumptionism and hedonism were questioned and rejected by the main character in those works. Furthermore, it reveals by comparison that the people's search for the real geographical homeland in the classical work turns into the anti-heroic character's pursuit of the ideal psychological heaven. The third chapter investigates the post-modernism narration property indicated by the books of the Theme of Pursuit in 1950 America. The investigation is operated through three perspectives, namely the narrative perspective, the plot perspective and the linguistic form. From the narrative perspective, this study relies upon an objective and restrictive respective to tell the story. From the narrative point of view, these works uses several skills such as interlude and fragmentation to make plots non-linearized. As to the narrative language, these authors attempt to explore a new story-telling style by using a mix of ditty words, slang and decent language.The last part concludes the entire paper by emphasizing its contribution to the literature. The future possible extension is also mentioned.