Choice And Confusion

Since its publication,Sister Carrie,the saga novel of Theodore Dreiser,arouses wide concern from domestic and foreign readers.Many scholars have studied it mainly from the perspectives of the naturalism,feminism,symbolism and consumerism.Based on close reading and qualitative analysis,this thesis explores the ethical choice and confusion of Carrie and Hurstwood in Sister Carrie by applying the relevant theories in Professor Nie Zhenzhao's ethical literary criticism such as ethical choice,ethical environment,ethical confusion and ethical identity.Firstly,this thesis analyzes the ethical environment Carrie and Hurstwood lived in.Secondly,this thesis analyzes the process of ethical choices Carrie and Hurstwood made according to their temporal working and family situation as well as their complex psychological changes from struggle to compromise.Thirdly,it explores the reasons for their final choices from the perspectives of consumerism-prevailing and interpersonal relationship-broken ethical environment and individual desire.Finally,it analyzes the ethical confusions they faced by the transition of ethical identities and destruction of ethical order from which it further explores the relationship between ethical choice and ethical confusion.It finds that the ethical environment where individual lived has a great impact on his wrong ethical choices.For one thing,wealth and material are the highest pursuits of people lived in consumer-prevalent society.In the pursuit of material and wealth,individual may become the slave of consumption and then makes wrong ethical choices on self-degeneration and misconduct.For another,the family filled with tolerance and consideration does not exist anymore in the society with broken family relationship.Life hardship and family indifference inevitably pushed individual into wrong ethical choices.It also finds that individual's wrong ethical choice is likely to lead to ethical confusion.Because of lacking ethical consciousness,individual often makes ethic-violating choice which will cause the transition of ethical identity as well as the destruction of ethical order and then bring in the ethical confusion.