On The Disillusionment Of "Utopia" In Little Fires Everywhere

Celeste Ng,born in 1980,is one of the emerging Chinese American female writers.Ng published many short stories and essays in various literary journals and magazines.Little Fires Everywhere,one of Ng’ representative works,received 27 annual book awards,including “This year’s crop of blockbuster books” by Amazon,“Book of the Year Award” by The New York Times.Focusing on the interaction among residents in the Shaker Heights,Little Fires Everywhere tells the story of the residents’ ideal of establishing an equal “Utopia”,but this ideal is finally disillusioned.The study on Little Fires Everywhere at home and abroad has achieved little success in terms of quantity and depth of its related researches.Scholars interpret this work from many perspectives,including theme studies,narratology studies and intertextuality studies.However,few scholars pay attention to the description of the disillusionment of “utopia”.The thesis employs Foucault’s power discourse theory,Lacan’s gaze theory,and Baudrillard’s consumer society,for the purpose of trying to analyze the disillusionment of “utopia” in Little Fires Everywhere.The first chapter discusses how the residents’ ideal of “utopia” is disillusioned by racial inequality.The racial inequality is mainly manifested in two aspects.Firstly,the white family differs greatly from other ethnic minorities in terms of their living location,space size and supporting facilities.Secondly,in terms of education,language and culture,the ethnic minorities in the Shaker Heights are discriminated.The second chapter discusses how the residents’ ideal of “utopia” is disillusioned by class inequality.The class inequality is mainly reflected in two aspects.First of all,the middle class is quite different from the lower class in terms of places,contents and styles of consumption.Secondly,there are huge differences between the middle class and the lower class in the career choice,children’s education and social communication.This differentiation leads to the lower classes being discriminated and being edged in the society,showing the inequality among classes.The third chapter discusses how the residents’ ideal of “utopia” is disillusioned by gender inequality.The gender inequality is mainly embodied in two aspects.First of all,the women still suffer from the oppression by institutional motherhood.Secondly,when faced with the choice of love,career and family,the women have to obey the rules of the patriarchy.The thesis concludes with the arguments put forward in the first three chapters.The thesis writer holds that Ng satirizes and criticizes various chronic diseases existing in the western society through the disillusionment of the ideal of “utopia” in her novel,and exposes her disillusionment as an immigrant,that is,the racial oppression suffered by the ethnic minorities,the marginalisation of the lower class in the United States,and the disappearance of females’ identity.The academic significance of this thesis lies in the description of the disillusionment of “utopia”,which provides more possibilities for the further study of the novel.And in terms of the realistic significance,the thesis intends to show that people should pay more attention to the living conditions of marginal groups.