A Comparative Study Of Characters’ Spiritual Crises In John Cheever’s Short Stories And Qian Zhongshu’s Fortress Besieged

John Cheever is a famous 20th-century American writer who lived in and wrote about the New York City while Qian Zhongshu was a very well-known 20th-century Chinese writer who became very popular for his novel Fortress Besieged. Their masterpieces, The Stories of John Cheever and Fortress Besieged, are two literary works which faithfully reflect the real society of each country and the spiritual world of various individuals at that time. On one hand, Chinese characters and American ones have different inner worlds, as they come from two different cultural backgrounds; on the other hand, both groups of characters are trapped in spiritual crises as a result of poor adaptation to the modern world. As spiritual crises vary in form, different individuals may be afflicted with different kinds of spiritual crises. Looked at as members of cultural groups, the two groups of characters share some spiritual crises while differ in several other crises. There must be reasons behind the similarities and differences. Therefore, this research project undertakes to compare characters in Cheever’s short stories and those in Qian Zhongshu’s Fortress Besieged so as to pin down the kinds of spiritual crises they share and those crises that affect only one group of characters. Then the social causes underlying the similarities and differences are probed. I hope that this thesis, based on discoveries of the research project, can broaden readers’horizon and offer them some useful information and enlightenment concerning human life in general.The thesis falls into six sections. Section 1 is an introduction, explaining the background, purpose and significance of the current research. Section 2 defines and explicates three literary terms which are referred to in this thesis. They are modernism, existentialism and spiritual crisis. Section 3 is a survey of literature, which gives a brief account of recent publications related to the research in question. Sections 4 and 5 constitute the body part of the thesis. Section 4 is a close examination of Cheever’s short stories and Qian Zhongshu’s Fortress Besieged for the sake of analyzing the spiritual crises confronting the two groups of characters. Section 5 traces the social causes of those spiritual crises. Section 6 brings the thesis to a natural conclusion. It reiterates the major findings of the research project and puts forward suggestions regarding topics for future research in this area.