Rebellion Or Development?

Mark Twain is one of the greatest American writers in the19th century, and his representative work The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is considered to be a classic American initiation story.70years later, J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye gained great attention in American even in the whole world. Though it is one of the most controversial novels in America, it is also regarded as a classic American initiation story in modern times. This paper will try to sum up characteristics of American initiation story by researching these two novels.Initiation story has a long history in Europe, and research achievements related are abundant. However, in recent years, along with development of American literature, American initiation story gradually enters into people’s attention and increasingly becomes a hot topic. With further research, we will find that some phenomena in American initiation story can not be explained with researches of traditional initiation story. For example, the main purpose of traditional initiation story is that the protagonist successfully integrates into society after experiencing growing pains. Then how to explain that Huck refuses to integrate into the society after experiencing growth in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn? How to explain that Holden eventually falls into confusion and despair in The Catcher in the Rye? From the ending of these novels, we can see that the protagonist of traditional initiation story obtains a new understanding of the society, the life and himself after experiencing the "inner journey". But this point cannot be realized in the above two novels. What does the tragie ending of two protagonists, which runs quite counter to traditional initiation story, indicate? According to research on language, we find that the language of traditional initiation story is elegant, while these two novels are filled with a large number of dialects and even indecent wording. Based on those doubts, a problem is gradually forming:What is the relationship between American initiation story and traditional initiation story? If the former is the development of the latter under new historical circumstances, why American initiation story abandons basic mode of traditional initiation story? If American initiation story is a novel type quite distinct from traditional initiation story, how to prove it? Based on those above doubts, I propose an assumption:though American initiation story also shows the development course of young people, and has a lot in common with traditional initiation story, it has formed a unique literary style. In this paper, I try to justify this view through four aspects of theme, protagonist, narrative and structure by taking two typical American initiation stories.The whole paper consists of six chapters. Chapter one introduces two typical American initiation stories and related literary criticism, literature review and significance of this study. Chapter two is starting from purpose of literary creation, profiling the difference between American initiation story and traditional initiation story and then extends to the difference of theme between these two novels. Chapter three focuses on the study of protagonist, exploring the difference between two levels from the image of protagonist and their spiritual pursuit. Chapter four examines the difference between American initiation story and traditional initiation story in text analysis from the aspect of narrative point of view and language features. Chapter five explores the differences between two novels from the aspects of structure and the outcome of novel. Through the analysis of these above four aspects, we draw final conclusions in Chapter six that America initiation story is a new form of novel around phenomenon of "growth" and it explores and interprets human growth from different angles comparing with traditional initiation story.