A Study Of The Ethical Salvation Of Ariah In The Falls

Joyce Carol Oates is a proficient and prolific female writer in contemporary America.Once acclaimed as the finest American writer since Faulkner,Oates gets much attention for applying diverse writing methods and handling a wide range of subjects.Oates is a serious social writer with strong sense of moral responsibility who devotes her efforts to the moral,educative and illustrative function of art.Most of her works focus on revealing social maladies and aim to arouse readers' concern on survival predicament and spiritual dilemma of common people.The Falls was published in 2004,a representative work of Oates.In this work,Oates portrays the process of Ariah,the heroin's ethical salvation after her falling in the ethical confusion and ethical degeneration caused by a series of devastating events happening in her marriages.Applying the approach of ethical literary criticism,this thesis mainly explores Ariah's ethical salvation process from her ethical confusion,ethical degeneration to ethical return and its profound connotation.Firstly,it aims to analyze the reasons that cause Ariah's confusion about her ethical identity with the ethical environment.The patriarchal family ethical environment and the deteriorated natural and social ethical environment result in Ariah's two tragic marriages and make her firmly fall into the ethical predicament and confusion.Secondly,this thesis investigates specifically the ethical dilemmas Ariah encounters and her wrong choices in the dilemmas.In that decadent circumstances,as a daughter,wife and mother,Ariah all encounters with the ethical dilemmas.However,with the depressed and confused mind,Ariah makes the selfish choices again and again which are against the family ethic or social ethic so as to resolve the predicament,as a result of which she is lost in the ethical degeneration.Last,the thesis focuses on the journey of Ariah's ethical salvation.Enlightened by the children and the constant frustrations,Ariah is awakening her ethical consciousness and realizes that the ethical predicament she is trapped in is created by her own selfishness and the degenerate social environment as well.Finally,Ariah makes a change through her efforts.She realizes her ethical salvation through re-recognizing the value of family ethic and social ethic and her self-worth in the family and society.The thesis points out that,in The Falls,Oates strongly satirizes the ethics of "every man for himself" and the moral decline of society.Meanwhile Oates expresses her ethical care to people and hopes that there will be a harmonious interpersonal relationship built on the basis of mutual care,mutual understanding,and mutual forgiveness.