An Analysis Of Mc Teague In Mc Teague From The Perspective Of Naturalistic Determinism

Frank Norris is a famous American writer featured with naturalism in the late 19th century. It was he who positively introduced the widely-known French writer Zola’s experimental novels into the USA. He thought so highly of Zola and tried so hard to approximate Zola’s writing style that he was called the "American Zola" or "Young Zola". Norris died at the very young age of thirty-three. During his short lifetime, he has created seven novels and numerous short stories and essays. In the circle of literature and criticism, he took pains to reveal the dark side of human beings and was acknowledged by the critics all over the world.Mc Teague, the first of Norris’s major novels published, was pivotal in winning him a place within the naturalist cannon. Because of its strict naturalistic features, Mc Teague was deplored and chided once it was published. However, the profound insights on men presented by this work quickly drew the attention of the whole literary world. After the first world war, the trauma brought by the disaster and the throes led by industralization and ubanization have made people focus on this thought-provoking novel. There were quite a few of scholars in China researched this work from the perspective of Freud’s psychoanalysis, the theory of carnival and so on. But the study for Mc Teague has showed a declining tendency these years and few graduates have discussed it as their final thesis. Mc Teague, a classic in exploring humanity, is abundant of naturalistic elements to be researched. This thesis started from the perspective of naturalistic determinism to seek out the determinants of Me Teague’s personality and fate.This thesis contains three parts. The first part is the introduction which introduces the author——Frank Norris and his works, the genesis of Mc Teague and its research status. The second part is the main body which can be divided into two chapters. This part illuminates the character from the point of heredity, desires and milieu respectively. In the part of heredity, it analyzes the vulnerability of humanity and the possibility of reversion from the aspect of Me Teague’s atavistic portrait, primitive professions and his unsocial life. The desire of Me Teague consists of material desire and sexual desire and it narrates his instinctive reaction and his craze about money. As for the milieu, it combines the macro environment which concludes the geographical conditions and the social background of San Francisco where the story set in and the micro environment of his surroundings which includes the specific Polk Street and his social world. This chapter studies the sense of weariness and helplessness of Me Teague when he is settled in this kind of milieu. The last part draws the conclusion of that people in the naturalistic novels are always overwhelmed by many forces and it is very hard for them to get rid of their animal past and people are always at the risk of reversion to animal.