A Tentative Study Of The Naturalistic Thought In Steinbeck's Of Mice And Man And The Pearl

Naturalism came forth in French in the latter half of the 19th century. Then as a literary thought, it spread across the world and had a great and deep influence on the writer of different countries. At the end of the 19th century, naturalism was spread into America and then formed the school of naturalistic novels and became the mainstream. Although the American naturalistic novels were formed under the influence of French naturalistic thought, because of the different cultural background and social environment, it shows its uniqueness. This paper just selects the typical naturalistic works of the American famous novelist John Steinbeck—Of Mice and Man and The Pearl to show the author's naturalistic thought. This paper is divided into three parts.The first part deals with the specific connotations of the American naturalistic literature. It firstly gives a simple survey of the American naturalistic literature, and then points out that the American naturalism is closely connected with the national economic theory, that the specific times background and the corresponding literary contexts determine the difference between the American naturalistic novels and the French ones in expressing their connotations. After that, this part further compares the difference between the American pre-naturalism and the post-naturalism, and comes to a conclusion that the deep-rooted American spirit and the prevailing romantic tradition weaken the pessimistic components in the American naturalistic literature, as a result, making the American naturalistic pessimism contain hopes.The second part analyzes Steinbeck's naturalistic thought. Influenced by the mega-tradition of the American naturalistic literature, the pessimistic feelings and optimistic keynote in his naturalistic thought constitute his specific naturalistic thought that is different from that of the other people. His specific thought originates from his own specific social environment, personal experience and thinking pattern of creating works when getting in touch with different literary works, from which we can find out that his naturalistic thought gives birth to hope. And this hope, fuses with pessimism to form a more high optimism which expresses a kind of optimistic belief that the human being can improve themselves.The third part analyzes Steinbeck's two novels—Of Mice and Man and The Pearl, and looks into the three aspects of his pessimistic feelings in his naturalistic thought from the perspective of teleology and non-teleology in philosophy. Firstly, Steinbeck lives in the age of Great Depression of 1930s and is influenced by the theory of economics. As a result, his economic determinism is formed. Steinbeck thinks that man is controlled by the powerful economic framework, particularly the abandoned people by society and the unprivileged who are doomed to failure regardless of their hard efforts. Secondly, the author is influenced by the marine microbiologist, Edward F, Ricketts'non-teleology, who regards life as a whole and the individuals can not break away the whole. The theory also is reflected on human being: everyone has his or her own fixed location, as one member, they are clearly separated from each other although as a whole. Thirdly, the author is influenced by social Darwinism which focuses on the economic determinism which advocates that man is miserable, and as a result, man is doomed to become the slaves of desire. Then this part also shows the direction of hope that the two philosophical thoughts—teleology and non-teleology contain, showing the optimistic keynote in Steinbeck's naturalistic thought.Through the systemic interpretation of Steinbeck'naturalistic thought in the 1930s, this paper offers a new angle to know the author, in order to know better the American literary thoughts in the 1920s to 1930s, and know better the formation of the writers'radical thoughts at that times.