Dissociation,Communication And Integration

Bobbie Ann Mason is a famous short story writer,novelist and critics in contemporary America.She has received considerable critical acclaim from academic canon since her first short stories collection,Shiloh and Other Stories,has published.Set primarily in rural western Kentucky which is experiencing dramatic social change,Mason's fiction depicts the changes of society,economy and morality and therefore the change of the characters' fate.Mason who has written 15 works in 35 years is prolific,but academic research mainly focuses on the works which published before 2000.Except for a few academic papers,there is still no relevant monographs for these short stories collections published after 2000.But these collections play an important role in Mason's works,which reflect the change of people's thinking in the western Kentucky in the new period.Therefore,it is necessary to increase the range of the works for Mason's studying.In addition,there has been extensive study of Mason in international academia,but Mason has not received much critical attention here in China.This thesis tries to study the three major themes of dissociation,communication and integration in Mason's short stories to explore the living conditions of the characters in the period of the new and old culture transition and the new challenges faced by individual.The thesis consists of five parts.The introduction part first introduces the writer and her works briefly,followed by the literature review,reviews the research status of Mason at home and abroad,and finally the introduction of the significance and content of the research.The first chapter mainly discusses the dilemma faced by the split of spiritual home,split of family and individual split by Western Kentucky people influenced by the confrontation between modern culture and traditional culture.The second chapter discusses the efforts of the Western Kentucky to face multiple divisions and seek multiple communication to rebuild the internal order and individual identity.The third chapter discusses the continuity of traditional and modern cultures and the re-exploitation of important values of the most basic concepts of mankind,and discusses the expectations and uncertainties of fusion in the theme of Mason's novels.The concluding part summarizes the above three themes,reveals the living conditions of people in the era of the conflict between the old and new cultures and the new tests they face,and reveals the importance of Mason's creation of social reality for the construction of the image of the contemporary American South.