| Joyce Carol Oates, who gets the reputation of "Woman Faulkner" because of her varied writing techniques and extensive genres, is one of the most important writers in modern American literature. Nevertheless, the most prominent contribution of Oates is the profound social meanings reflected in her writings by the distinct themes. This paper will mainly choose I'll Take You There as the research object, starting with Oates's life experience and artistic theories, along with the social reality and living situation of modern people described in her fiction, to analyze Oates's views on death by the theory of Psychoanalysis, so as to gain the deep meaning of death in her novels.I'll Take You There is mainly about a female college student, narrating the process of her searching for self-value by using the writing technique of interior monologue. It reveals self-denial and the loss of self-consciousness caused by mental depression and lack of love. Oates uses the reappearance and death of the leading character's father as the final chapter to make people find out the meaning of existence by death:death, though cruel, does not mean the end, and existence is not equal to being alive. Death coexists with survival. Only if people accurately know the meaning of death can they understand the significance of existence.Oates focuses on the reality of modern society, taking the dark sides of the society as the cut-in point, using death as the theme, to exposure many kinds of problems existing in America, so as to reflect the difficulty of modern people in existence, and to further instruct them to recognize the meaning of existence:people should establish self-consciousness and self-value to change the spiritually barren state and become independent. To illustrate the significance of existence to people, which shows Oates's concern about the fate of common people and the future of the whole society, also, it reveals the deep social meaning of the theme of death. |
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