The Existential State Of Postmodern People

Donald Barthelme(1931-1989), as one of the most representative postmodern novelists in America, publishes five novels and eight collections of short stories. His masterpiece Snow White parodies Grimm’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs by dissembling the original story and putting the characters into the postmodern society. Nowadays more and more scholars pay much attention to the special characteristics of the novel. Previous studies on the novel mostly focus on the perspectives like deconstructionism, narrative strategies(such as meta-fiction, parody, collage, intertextuality), feminism and textual comparisons. Based on Maslow’s need hierarchy theory, the thesis attempts to analyze the situation of satisfaction of characters’ different levels of needs in Snow White. According to the analysis, the author aims to interpret the existential state of Americans in postmodern society.As science and technology has highly developed, the postmodern society offers a solid material foundation for people, which guarantees their physiological needs. However, the rich materials can not satisfy the other kinds of needs. This thesis respectively analyzes the different conditions of satisfaction of characters’ safety needs, belongingness and love needs, as well as esteem needs in the novel. By analyzing the novel, the author finds that there are many plights in the process of people’s pursuit. First, environmental pollution, the problem of food quality and the destruction of the crimes and violence directly threaten people’s physical safety; in addition, the unemployment problem, the side effects of mass culture and the interference of personal privacy seriously threaten people’s psychological safety. Second, in the postmodern society, people have the abnormal concept of family, and they lose their spiritual belief. Therefore, they can’t feel the love from their families and friends and don’t have the sense of belongingness. Finally, because of the dissatisfaction of the two basic levels of needs above, people’s pursuit of esteem needs becomes more difficult. It’s not only people’s own problems, but also the constraints of social conditions that make people’s spiritual world extremely empty and their behaviors ridiculous.By analyzing the characters’ needs of the novel, we know that the intention of Barthelme’s creation is to let readers learn about the existential state of postmodern people in America: the loss of safety, the loss of belongingness, the loss of love and the loss of belief. The most profound meaning of Barthelme’s creation is to make the readers pay more attention to enriching their spiritual life in the development of themselves and their societies.