Research On Symbolism And Cultural Identity In James Alan McPherson's Short Stories

James Alan McPherson (1943- ) is one of the best gifted among those black American short-story writers in contemporary America. With the publication of Elbow room- his first collection of short stories, McPherson was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1979, thus became the first short story writer who got that prize. Before that, Gold Coast got the first place in a literary contest sponsored by Atlantic Monthly.Undoubtedly one of the best stories of McPherson, the publication of Gold Coast has attracted enough attention form various aspects, such as the literary circle and critical world. Through the description of a black young man's janitorial experience, the novel depicts various kinds of tenants living in that building whose name is Gold Coast. Those tenants come from different countries, they should have been the carriers of their own culture, while being marginalized by the mainstream white culture, they actually become the outsiders of the latter. Although there is a lack of enough proof to claim that McPherson intended symbolism to be his philosophical basis in creating his novel, however, we can easily find a lot of symbolic elements scattering throughout the novel. Functioning like an undertone, Symbolism brings a new perspective to the main theme of this novel. Therefore, Symbolism must be a vantage point for the analysis of the deep meaning in Gold Coast.This thesis attempts to analyze Symbolism in Gold Coast from four aspects, the symbolic meaning of the janitorial experience of the narrator, the setting, the characters and the relationship between the narrator and the old janitor respectively. This thesis is composed of six chapters:Chapter one introduces the research purpose of this thesis, research situation home and abroad, research approach and research originality. As a contemporary African-American writer, McPherson's novels have stirred heated discussion in western countries, while in China, there is no serious research on him. So analyzing McPherson's first short novel Gold Coast in a symbolic way can offer a new perspective.The second chapter introduces McPherson's life, writing career and his writing characteristics. Although a black writer, McPherson concerns with the whole American society by transcending the color line, which is closely related to the environment in which he has grown up. McPherson has two collections of short stories and a memoir. Permeated with humanistic ideas, McPherson's works depict the marginalized groups which are exclusive from mainstream American culture.As the core of this thesis, the third and the fourth chapters will be devoted to the analysis of Gold Coast in the symbolic way. At the beginning of the story, as an acceptor of white culture, the protagonist is blindly optimistic about his future. He tries to ignore the racial barrier without success. Frustrated by successive failures, he finally becomes a thoughtful man with his own understanding of cultural identity. Other characters are also full of symbolic meanings, such as Murphy the celibate man and the old spinster Miss O'Hara, they are the symbols of the castration of other culture. While the final understanding and reconciliation between the narrator and the old janitor symbolize the combination of immigrant other cultures and the white culture.The fifth chapter demonstrates the dilemma of African-American culture, the cultural identity crisis and McPherson's quest for cultural identity. Because of the particularity of their culture and history, each black man has sensed his duality as American- each of them has two souls, two ways of thinking. They are confronted with the white American culture, but in their deep heart, they can not avoid the collective unconscious traditional black culture. The choice of their culture engenders the cultural identity crisis.Through a detailed interpretation of symbolism in the novel, this thesis comes to the conclusion that by employing symbolism, this novel breaks free from protest literature, attributing great significance to the main theme. The change of the narrator in this novel is actually that of McPherson about the quest of his own cultural identity. Cultures should mix together by transcending the barriers of races and color lines, culture identity should do the same thing.