An Analysis Of The Characters’ Fate In The Gravedigger’s Daughter From The Perspective Of Raymond Williams’ Tragic Ideas

Published in 2007,The Gravedigger’s Daughter is Oates’ s 36 th novel,a story about Jews who immigrated to the United States to escape the Nazi Holocaust during World War II.There is conflict between the character of the Jewish immigrant Jacob family in the novel and the social environment in which they live,which inevitably led these Jewish immigrants to a tragic end.Therefore,this thesis focuses on Oates’ s tragic fate writing and tragic consciousness in the process of reflecting on the survival difficulties and encounters faced by American Jewish immigrants from 1930 s to 1960 s.In Oates’ s view,these characters,as representatives of American Jewish immigrants in the 20 th century,show tragic defects from time to time,but the commendable passionate personality of the protagonists makes them bloom the glory of human nature in the struggle.This thesis consists of three parts: introduction,main body and conclusion.The introduction consists of two parts: the introduction of Oates and her works and literature review.The literature review includes domestic and foreign research.Through domestic and foreign research,it can be seen that most theses analyze The Gravedigger’s Daughter from the perspectives of violence,feminism,cultural identity,trauma and ethnicity.There is no thesis to analyze the novel by using tragic theory.There is only one book written by Wang Dan taking Eagleton’s modern cultural tragic ideas as a theoretical framework,clearly defines the category of Oates’ s tragic novels from the perspective of modern cultural tragedy,including The Gravedigger’s daughter.This thesis is based on Raymond Williams’ tragic ideas as the theoretical framework,combined with violence,women and racial discrimination,trauma and other perspectives to analyze the fate of the main characters in the novel.The main part consists of four chapters.The first chapter explains the Williams’ tragic ideas used in this thesis,mainly including Williams’ seven modern tragic literary forms,and its corresponding characters can be found in The Gravedigger’s Daughter.Among them,Williams agreed with Brecht’s negation of tragedy,established a new tragic consciousness,and found a theoretical basis for people to re understand tragedy.In combination with the seven emotional structures,the establishment of common culture and the new tragic consciousness talked about by Raymond Williams,chapter two,chapter three and chapter four discuss the tragic fate of the characters in the novel from three aspects: the embodiment of the tragic fate of the characters,the formation factors of the tragic fate of the characters and the the characters’ new cognition of their tragic fate.This thesis analyzes how several protagonists living in difficulties deal with their tragic fate,and analyzes the deep significance of Oates’ tragic creation.The second chapter analyzes the tragic fate of the main characters in the corresponding emotional structure.The six tragic literary forms mentioned by Williams are applied to the main characters in The Gravedigger’s Daughter.Tragic fate can be divided into tragic death and tragic reconciliation.It can be seen from this work that Anna,Jacob and Tignor die tragically;Rebecca and Freda reach a tragic reconciliation with their fate through a tragic revolt.The third chapter analyzes the factors of the tragic fate of the characters.Firstly this thesis summarizes the character factors from the characters’ different specific experiences of evil,and then emphasizes the importance of the sense of history and analyzes the social roots of the characters’ tragedy,because the society and the individual mentioned by Williams are inseparable.There are three factors in society,such as the Antisemitism,sexism and interpersonal factors of characters.The fourth chapter summarizes the characters’ new cognition of their tragic fate in this work.The characters in this novel reflect on the impact of the death of their loved ones on their lives and make reconciliation with their families.In the process of fighting against their tragic fate,they learned to have the courage to resist evil.In order to make their souls in foreign countries no longer lonely,they try to find their own kind and get a sense of belonging in their national culture.Then,All kinds of nations construct common culture little by little.At last,characters in this work should build new tragic consciousness.Finally,the conclusion summarizes the main points of this thesis.Combined with Williams’ modern tragic literature theory,this thesis analyzes the embodiment,factors and new cognition of the tragic fate of the characters in The Gravedigger’s daughter.Let people has a new understanding of the tragedy.This thesis inspires people to use the new tragic consciousness to face the rough life actively and look forward to a better life.This thesis analyzes the novel from a new perspective,expands the research perspective of the work,and helps readers re-understand Oates and her works from a new perspective.However,this thesis also has some shortcomings.For example,it does not analyze the fate of all the characters in the works,and only uses part of Williams’ tragic ideas,and other tragic ideas need to be explored.In short,the tragic ideas and research perspective used in this thesis are not comprehensive and in-depth,and there is still a lot of room for improvement.