The Study Of Immigrant’ Americanization In E·L·Doctorow’s Novels

Edgar Lawrence Doctorow was a famous post-modernist novelist in America. He is adept at using new historicism approach to rewrite the history from a special point of view which was different from traditional orthodox perspectives. He was crowned as a “radical Jewish humanist” for his concern on American modern history and satirical evaluation on power politics. As a Russian immigrant living in America, many of his works reflect all kinds of troubles faced by recent immigrants and their descendants from being accepted by American mainstream culture. Taking the four novels- World’s Fair, Ragtime, The March and Homer&Langley for example, this article unveils the immigrant “Americanization” issue from different perspectives of three families including the three generations from a Russian family, the African in America as well as the UK’ immigration.The whole article is divided into three sections, namely introduction, discussion and conclusion. Introduction mainly introduces the life and performance of Doctorow and his unique opinions with respect to immigrant “Americanization” issue. Apart from his immigrant identity, his concern on social issues and ineradicable humanistic thought also played a significant role. Then it discloses the domestic and overseas conditions on research and presents the reason for selecting this topic and the value of the research. There are three chapters in total. The first chapter taking World’s Fair as an example focuses on stating the problems in “assimilation” of Jewish immigrant from Eastern Europe. In face of a toss up between “Jewishness” and “Americanization”, the first generation immigrants were unable to face the future as they could not eliminate the traumatic memory they had in their home country. The totally different development tendency of the second generation immigrants led to a breakdown of the family. They have differences in children’s education. However, the third generation hovers between American modern culture and national memory, they are in the grip of identity “crisis”. The second chapter taking The March and Ragtime for example brings readers back to the history of American. This chapter paying close attention to the secondary immigration of Africans to America does an analysis on how ethnic prejudice and class discrimination hindered black people from obtaining equal citizenship and right from the naturalization angle. The third chapter taking Homer & Langley for example presents the changes in American time concept by seeing from the brothers’ perspectives. Readers can witness the multicultural collision as New Yorkers and have a look at how entertainment and diversification of postmodern culture clear up the traditional “Americanization” standards as descendant of ancient Western European immigrants. The conclusion gives a summary of the discussions about the topics of Americanization and diversification.With the development of the times,the standard about immigrant ’Americanization has changed from the Eurocentric monism to the rise of multiculturalism, which underlines the increasingly open and inclusive of American society. Doctorow in his works recorded the process of transformation, and reviewed that with strong humanistic care.