Confronting The Alienated World

Eudora Welty,an outstanding female southern writer,is distinguished by her intelligent short stories.As a promising young writer of Southern Renaissance who anchors herself in the South,Eudora Welty witnesses the tremendous social transformations of the South throughout the 20~th century,from which she sucks all the fodder for her fiction.Welty criticized the industrialism of the modern society for it drives the human being into insane.People always focus on the external appearance of losing the meaning of existence;however,they always stop at the superficial reaches when it comes to the inner world of people.The basic aim of this thesis therefore is to interpret characters of Welty's short stories in A Curtain of Green and Other Stories and analyzing their psychology.As her first collection of short stories,A Curtain of Green and Other Stories established Welty's reputation as a short story writer and set the tone for her narrative style and discourse characteristics as well.She viewed the South from within and outside traditions.She was absorbed in the complexity of changing human relationships. The stories were concerned largely with single moments of personal crisis.Although a strong sense of ordered community bound the setting of the stories together,it was the inner lives of the characters that interested Welty more than their public faces.She was more concerned with individual self-deception than with social hypocrisy.In Welty' stories,in terms of characters' mental state,she always created two kinds of characters: normal characters and abnormal characters.Different mental states led to different behaviors and even different fates in the given settings of society and times.Welty conveys her view on the American southern society by observing common people,getting insight into their inner world,and describing their physical and psychological action.By analyzing the characters,a clear vision on the features of the normal characters can be achieved.The features of the normal characters,especially their inheritance of southern traditional values and beliefs,give them sufficient energy to confront with the cruel,indifferent modern industrial society,and strengthen their way of life in the traditional times,so as to survive in hard life.In contrast with the normal characters,features of the freak characters lead to their sad fate.Lack of communication makes their life fall into terrible trouble;lack of the love makes them more despaired and depressed;loneliness makes them more indifferent to life.Longing for love and being separated from love brings them hopelessness. Structurally it is composed of an introduction,three chapters and conclusion:In Introduction,it is a survey of Welty's experience of life and creation and a general introduction of the literary review and criticism of A Curtain of Green and Other Stories.Chapter One focuses on a general introduction of Existentialism and its theories which are closely related with this thesis.Chapter Two is a detailed discussion of the embodiment of estrangement.Chapter Three explores the diversified responses of two kinds of characters.At last,according to the above analysis a conclusion for the whole thesis can be reached that in the struggle and under the background of the transitional society,the human beings are dehumanized,and the normal characters, which have a strong will,go on living,but the persons who are freak in spirit fall into a ruinous state.This thesis,from an Existentialism perspective,probes into the absurdity of the world around us and the estrangement in human relationship,and tries to verify that a different attitudes and perspectives of life can influence one's world deeply.If we adopt a positive position,life will be changed.The features of Welty's sentimental world is her seeking for meaning of existence,concerning about people's inner world and faith of love.Welty clearly exposes her understanding on the meaning of life-people's need for love.In Welty's view,love and dream in the true meaning of life and understanding and projection are true meaning of existence.