Alienatioil And Salvation---A Study Of John Cheever’s The Wapshot Chroicle From The Perspective Of Existentialism

As far as the contemporary American literature is concerned, John Cheever’s literature results are mainly reflected in his creations of short stories, which have attracted the attentions of critics. Consequently, they focus their research on his short stories, even conferring "the American Chekhov" on him. In addition to his short stories, Cheever has also produced five novels, which have received less popularity or even been neglected, when compared with his short stories. However, his novels are worth studying and can yield great significance, with the reason that Cheever has built up a totally different world by his acute observation and ingenuity. In these novels, he has exposed that people suffer apathy and alienation under the seemingly cultured society.Due to present research status, this paper invents a new way of studying Cheever’s works represented by his first novel---The Wapshot Chronicle from the perspective of existentialism. Probably, it is the first attempt in China to discuss John Cheever’s first novel The Wapshot Chronicle from such perspective. It displays Cheever’s concern about the plights of people after the war and in a sense his suggestions about escaping these plights are also indicated. In the field of Existentialism, alienation is an indispensable principle, so this paper focuses on the alienation befell one male character Leander and then help readers figure out how people can survive in the absurd world after the war. Detailedly, combined with the personal experience and understanding of the writer John Cheever, analysis of this paper, in the first step digs out the roots of alienation reflected in Leander. Secondly, author of this paper explores deeply to see what the external manifestations of Leander’s alienation are. At last, it will be pointed out that how Leander strives to escape his plight and therefore achieve his salvation eventually.This paper consists of five parts. The first chapter provides some background information about the writer as well as the work. The final one is a summary about the discoveries the paper has found. Chapter Two to Chapter Four sever as the body of the paper. Chapter Two mainly introduces what alienation denotes and connotates in the field of Existentialism. Attention is also paid to analyzing the connection between the concerns about alienation in Cheever’s works and the interpretations of alienation in Existentialism. Based on a textual analysis of The Wapshot Chronicle with Existentialism as the theoretical support, Chapter Three and Chapter Four go deeper to reveal Leander’s alienation and how he chooses to break away from it. Whereafter, it is possible to penetrate into Cheever’s mind to see what kind of social outlook he held when he created that novel.