Deep Description Of Ethnography In Local Writing Of Monterey Trilogy

John Steinbeck(1902-1968),the winner of the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature,portrays an anti-hero group who yearns for freedom and individualism in the suburb of Monterey,an area opposite to the capitalist world,trying to deconstruct the mainstream values of modern capitalism.With a half-century time span and the focus on the mixed population and multiculturalism in marginal communities,the Monterey Trilogy shows a historical and ethnic significance and demonstrates the characteristics of ethnography.Based on close reading,the thesis considers the interpretation of ethnographic thick description as an internal logical clue,while using theoretical methods of cultural geography,cultural anthropology,ethnography and sociology.In this way,the thesis endeavors to explore the living environment and customs of the local underclass community presented by the Monterey Trilogy.At the same time,the evolution of population structure,social relations and cultural system under the impact of modern urban civilization as well as the hidden ethnographic gene and value have also been taken into account.The first chapter discusses the images of natural geography and human geography in the three novels.The novel Pancake Ping describes a remote,secluded and primitive suburb in Monterey County,California,after the end of World War I in the 1920s.The primary forest and the fjord valley there reflect an initial state in which nature is tightly integrated with human beings.The novel Cannery Street depicts the industrialized piscatorial community formed in the suburb of Monterey County in the 1930s.In Cannery Street,there exists two different natural and social landscapes,one is a positive and recyclable model based on the holistic and equal view of ecologism,the other represents as a domination and excessive demand towards nature on the basis of industrialization.The novel Sweet Thursday pictures the changes of the local social environment after the end of World War Ⅱ in the 1940s.The distinction between the outsiders’ strange space and the traditional area of the aborigines,and the division in the block landscape and facilities mutually shape the differential external manifestation between urban and rural people in class,occupation,culture and perception.The second chapter analyzes the groups in the above different environmental backgrounds.The dominant part of the population of Pancake Ping and Cannery Street consists of descendants with mixed blood of Mexican,Indian and Spanish,as well as grassroot immigrants from Europe,Asia and America.Most of them are passionate Dionysian followers,ignoring the capitalist business system,values and social order,adhering to the natural view of money and material,releasing their worldly pressure with alcohol or sexual excitement,and seeking enlightenment and comfort from unrestrained and extreme experiences.Another kind of people are spiritual leaders of the community,including biologists,Chinese traders and madams.Although surrounded by Dionysian crowds,they try their best to avoid destructive experiences and feelings,and refuse to place their hope on supernatural strength and belief,but follow a programmatic,regular and moderate life.There are also workers and bosses of canneries,proprietors in the emergent business districts and city dwellers who spend their holidays for leisure in high-class communities.Their life revolves around industry and commerce,most of the time,they guide predatory economic activities with monetary thinking,and try to dominate nature with technology and machinery industries,which is the reflection of modern mainstream western society.The third chapter analyzes how the local overall "intimate,secret and simple common life" comes into being.The Pacific Jungle Island embodies a social pattern of hostility,vicious competition and false peace in Rock War,legal regulations and Butterfly Festival.In contrast,the collective gathering in Cannery Street can not only “harmonize the final values”,effectively integrate the social structure,but also meet the unique psychological needs of the lower-class to coordinate sense and sensibility.Masquerades and lottery fund-raising activities reflect the local experience in exploring a new social model during the development and transition period,some of the experience comes from success while others gained from failure.Collective activities based on aggregation may sometimes strengthen the common understanding of community,but sometimes due to changes in population structure,not unity but differences are exposed and intensified.Then,the thesis analyzes the various interpersonal combination structures presented by local people in their common life,and explores the blood-like relationship among local people who are not relatives but get along better than relatives,such as the analogous mother-son relationship and the marital relationship established on going together through thick and thin.Besides,there also exists geographical relationship under the same roof,which shares a similar universal characteristics like living together in villages,namely “cooperative”,such as friendship in small groups and friendly relations between neighbors.All of these interpersonal structures make the individual’s social construction closer.The fourth chapter summarizes the similarities and differences in methodology between the novel text and the thick description text in ethnography.On the one hand,they both focus on the marginal ethnic groups,share the realistic basis of field investigation,and take vividness,micro-perspective and the author’s independent intervention as the key points;On the other hand,when it comes to specific composing paradigms,such as the proportion of reality and fiction,and the way the author intervenes,they may not reach an agreement.The "Monterey Trilogy" embodies Steinbeck’s literary “thick description” process,in the three novels,Steinbeck notes real group norms and individual behavior examples with the consciousness of fieldwork,integrates personal experience and feeling in his writing as an emotional observer,and reveals the deep meaning with literary expression and narrative skills.These efforts endow the “Monterey Trilogy” a sense of ethnography thick description: it is a record of the impression of the underclass ethnic groups in Monterey,and simultaneously a excavation of local knowledge in the marginal areas once sheltered.Observing others can also provide an opportunity to look into oneself,in this sense,the text plays a role of a mirror inward for both the author and readers to review their own culture and civilization,and guides people to think about the common world knowledge of mankind.