An Ethical Literary Interpretation Of The Falls

Joyce Carol Oates is a distinguished and influential contemporary American novelist.Her masterpiece,The Falls,published in 2004,instantly caught attentions and received good reputation in the literary world at home and abroad.Many researches have been done from various aspects to analyze The Falls,but few are in light of ethical literary criticism.Based on this research situation,this thesis excavates ups and downs of the heroine's fate and explores her ethical relationship with others in the novel to reveal Oates' s ethical thoughts and didactic meaning of the novel.At first,this thesis begins with the tragic marriage at Ariah's first stage of life.Depressed social ethical situation and family ethical situation in the 1950 s exerted negative effects on Ariah and her first husband Gilbert and resulted in their distorted views on marriage,which led to Gilbert's committing suicide on their wedding night and Ariah's changed identity overnight.This utilitarian marriage is destined to cause serious consequence,which displays Oates' s wish to encourage people to pursue true love and happy marriage.Next,this thesis discusses Ariah's experience at her second stage of life.Failure of the first marriage awakened Ariah's self-consciousness.She bravely pursued true love and married Dirk,a lawyer,from a different circle.Based on mutual respect and love,their marriage life was happy and harmonious.However,their different ethical identities aroused conflicts between them.In the end,Dirk was murdered because of his involvement of “Love Canal” case,which made Ariah become a widow again.By portraying the couple's different emphasis on family ethics and social ethics,and Dirk's death,Oates intends to attack the selfishness and parochialism in that dark society and speak highly of the selfless spirit and self-sacrifice of people like Dirk.Finally,this thesis explores Ariah's third stage of life which mainly demonstrates the process of the return of family ethics,including the return of inter-generational ethics and husband and wife ethics.Although there existed conflicts between Ariah and her two sons,with the sons' attempts,their ethical relationship eventually moved towards harmony.In the meantime,due to the exposure of the truth and acknowledgement of the society for Dirk,Ariah removed her misunderstanding for Dirk and understood his behaviors,thus the construction of husband and wife ethics was realized.Experiencing torture of life again and again,Ariah bravely fought instead of yielding to fate.At last,she grew up to be a self-reliant woman who earned social status and people's respect.In the ethical return and construction,Oates' s pursuit to establish a harmonious connection with family members finally comes true.In a word,this thesis analyzes Ariah's three stages of life to display her intricate ethical relationships with others,which are from distortion to harmony.Meanwhile,undergoing a series of ups and downs of life,Ariah completed her growth and realized her life values.From these descriptions,we can also see Oates' s hope and efforts to build up harmonious and friendly ethical relationship with others and environment.