| Carson McCullers (1917-1967) is one of the important American writers in20th century. Her Works don’t only reveal southern people’s spiritual state of loneliness and anxiety, but also reflect southern social reality which is full of. conflict and contradiction. McCullers also thinks about how people struggle hardly to save themselves out of such predicament through writing.The thesis tends to interpret McCullers’three Works The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, The Ballad of Sad Cafe, The Member of the Wedding depending on the course "predicament-survival" in combination with her biography from the perspective of existentialism.This thesis is composed of five chapters.Chapter one mainly introduces McCullers’Works and summarizes the statement of the current academic study of McCullers both in China and the worldwide, and points out that this thesis studies McCullers’Works from the perspective of existentialism.Chapter two mainly reveals the crisis of Southern society from three aspects:the decline of religion, industrial economy characterized by mechanized massive production and racial conflict and the social reality provides the background of that era.Chapter three mainly discusses people’s predicament from three aspects: individual spiritual experience of loneliness and anxiety, the conflicting relationship between the individual and others and fighting against threaten of death. From that we can see McCullers’understanding of people’s predicament is similar to that of existentialists.Chapter four mainly discusses how people struggle against the predicament to save themselves. This course consists of two stages. Firstly people create a false "God" to escape out of the predicament, and this behavior is what Sartre said "bad faith"; after "God" is "dead", people are dragged into despair, and then it turns to the second stage. For-itself makes people able to make free choices to get out of the dilemma, and some people make the negative choice "suicide", but some still believe that there is hope in the desperate life. Everyone has the freedom to choose, but whatever choice you make, you have to bear the consequences and take the responsibilities. What McCullers wants to reveal is that when facing predicament, people should make positive selection and take the responsibilities, and still have hope in the future.Chapter five makes a brief summary on the content which have discussed before, and points out the significance of studying McCullers’ Works from the existentialism perspective. |
