Anxiety And Self-salvation-An Interpretation Of A Visit From The Goon Squad Based On Horney’s Theory

A Visit from the Goon Squad is a novel with distinct experimental colors by a contemporary American female writer Jennifer Egan, which evokes wide repercussions in American literature and criticism circle once it has been published. Having been awarded the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the novel keeps receiving much more extensive attention of scholars both at home and abroad. This thought-provoking and cleverly structured novel is composed of 13 stories, which are seemingly loose structured but actually interrelated. Within a 50-year-period across from the 1970s to the 2020s, the novel portrays the vanishing of youth, the disillusionment of dreams and the crash of self in the passage of time. It reveals that under the background of contemporary American digital era, although people take delights in enjoying abundant material achievements brought by highly developed technologies, they also suffer from various mental pressures, especially inner anxiety. Some typical physical and mental disorders of protagonists in the novel are the potential manifestations of their inner anxiety. In order to get rid of anxiety and eventually achieve self-salvation, the protagonists adopt different strategies respectively.Starting with the typical physical and psychological illnesses of characters in the novel such as kleptomania, autism, sex addiction, this thesis analyzes the main forms of anxiety through the metaphorical meanings indicated by the various illnesses. On the one hand, based on the anxiety theory put forward by Karen Horney—one of the representatives of the social-cultural school of psychoanalysis, the thesis explores the causes of inner anxiety from the perspectives of society, culture and individual experiences. It is found out that environmental factors such as social changes and cultural transition triggered by the changing production mode are the root causes of inner anxiety while special individual experiences constitute the direct ones. On the other hand, according to the coping strategies summarized by Horney, the main strategies adopted by characters to fight against anxiety as well as the corresponding consequences are also specifically illustrated. By detailed discussions about the process of characters’fights against inner anxiety and their attempts to accomplish self-salvation in the novel, this thesis uncovers the social roots of the widespread anxiety existing in the contemporary society and reveals how modern people response to the mental stress from various aspects of society, family, career and emotions etc., thus offering effective counter strategies against different sorts of anxiety increasingly occurring in modern society—only by adopting the "Moving with" strategy can individuals overcome inner anxiety and build wholesome personality. In addition, it is also obviously inferred from the novel that Jennifer Egan shows her concern and contemplations on people’s inner world, which inspire readers to explore the existential problem and the pursuit of self-value under the ravaging effects of time. Different from other postmodernist writers in America, Egan also brings readers the faith in seeking changes and the hope of surviving while exposing and criticizing the social and cultural factors at the same time, which carries important reference and guiding significance for people overcoming their inner anxiety and realizing self-salvation as well as achieving the harmonious unification of self in the end.