A　Well-Wrought Metaphor

American Jewish writer E. L. Doctorow's new shot The March (2005) narrated from multiple points of view has won increasingly wide acclaim. This endless march that almost propels human capacity for endurance and patience to the limit has imprinted a deep dent on everybody involved, both physiologically and psychologically. Thrown into the brutal dark force of the march, all protagonists'fate is preordained, at the mercy of incidental contingent occurrences and some mysterious black power. Whatever kind of attempt is futile to escape the deterministic sentence of destructive evil force, and human progress follows a repetitive cycle allowing occasional possibility rather than promising likelihood. Through textual analysis on the tragic fate the protagonists have undergone in this well-wrought life-journey metaphor, finding recourse to existentialism and Schopenhauer's pessimistic philosophy, this thesis is dedicated to substantiate Doctorow's patterns of total view, the primary assumptions of metaphysics that power as the permanent agent of permanent change engenders the disintegration and degradation of all forms and interpretations and institutions powerfully willed by man and society. This thesis comes to a conclusion that Doctorow holds a skeptical and pessimistic outlook, and profound distrust toward life and human progress. The hope is almost bleak for individual struggle to master his personal fate and shackle the bondage of blind power and evil force from the external world so as to attain his authentic selfhood.Chapter One explores the varied existential states of the dispossessed who are deprived of the meaning of life and bewildered about the sense of existence against the shared condition—the march, namely, the beings under passive attachment like white Negro Pearl and the white lady Emily Thompson, by probing into individual mind to expose the psychological struggle and quest for the true sense of being, especially, Pearl's growing awareness of and reflection upon freedom of existence and her yearning cry for freedom of soul. Chapter Two digs into the depth of those beings with false freedom of choice, like Sherman, Sartorius and Arly who are in essence poisoned by reason with despair, possessed with selfish desires or foolish beliefs. Chapter Three by analyzing the protagonists'partially transformed existence and inability to control their fate testifies Doctorow's pessimistic metaphysics. Chapter Four draws a conclusion by reclaiming Doctorow's pessimistic metaphysics and justifies that human attempt for prevalence over the black power of fate and attainment of authentic selfhood is almost futile. Yet what makes man noble is the undying perseverance and bravery of attempt and the wish to transcend his existence.