A Study Of The Names From The Perspective Of Ethical Literary Criticism

De Lillo is one of the most prominent and outstanding postmodern novelists.The story consists of three main clues,which contains the murder caused by alphabetic coincidence of the figure’s initials and the place names,the protagonist---James’ s emotional life with his wife and his emigrating job and daily life as an American merchant in Greek.In the novel,the cult’s insane and irrational involvement in the killing reflects peripheral group’s inner turmoil and their pursuit of order.However,those persons who come from highly advanced civilization,namely archaeologists,merchants and filmmakers,do not make proper ethical choices.On the contrary,they give up the constraints of humanity one after another and choose to join in the murder cases indirectly.Although the background of the novel following De Lillo’s emigration changes,what it presents is still closely associated with the real crisis in the post-modern American society with war,violence,terror,cheat and death everywhere,indicating the spiritual crisis under the shadow of the turbulent international pattern after the World War Two in American society,thus stimulating wide academic researchers’ attention from both at home and abroad since it came out.Nevertheless,most of the earlier critics and judges have assessed the novel on motif,language games,terrorism,hegemonism,aspects of postmodernism and the narrative strategy.Yet they pay less attention to the ethical situation implied and indicated in the work and the writer’s real intention.Therefore,this thesis intends to interpret and analyze the novel from the view of ethical literary criticism to analyze the ethical issues and illnesses which exist in the post-modern American society in order to discuss ethical predicament,ethical identity and ethical consciousness faced by these characters in the relationships between human and society,human and human themself,thus further revealing the distorted humanity caused by American political violence,consumerism and commercial culture.Through this theory,it discloses De Lillo’s ethical values,his critical and ironic attitude towards the imbalance of ethical situation in postmodern society.This thesis will be divided into six chapters.Firstly,it will briefly introduce Don De Lillo and his The Names.Then it makes a summary about the academic researches on the novel both at home and abroad.Next it will give an account of theoretical basis,including its definition,origin,development as well as the major content.Besides,it mainly elaborates on ethical situation and condition which the figures face from three levels,namely the ethical predicament,ethical identity and ethical consciousness in the work.Last but not least,it summarizes and reiterates the main idea that people should establish correct ethical consciousness to break through the ethical predicament.