On The Isolation-Identification Syndrome In Carson Mccullers’s Works

Carson McCullers is a writer of considerable influence and extraordinaryoriginality in the American literary circle of1940s. Throughout McCullers’s majorworks, spiritual isolation remains a perpetual and paramount theme. In her works,McCullers explores the isolated condition of human existence and depicts thecomplex and subtle feelings of various isolated outsiders.Most of McCullers’s critics touched upon the theme of spiritual isolation, butfew of them associated it with identification, a psychological process closelyinteracting with the experience of isolation, and even fewer saw identification as partof the spiritual malady. This thesis, on the basis of former studies and employing themethod of close-reading, tries to argue that the characters in McCullers’s literaryworld are not simply infected with an isolation malady, but are trapped in a morecomplicated circle of isolation and identification, which the thesis designates asIsolation-Identification Syndrome. The thesis first introduces the general idea and thetwo types of the Isolation-Identification Syndrome, and retells McCullers’s fivenovels from the perspective of interactive isolation and identification. Then taking theprotagonists in all of McCullers’s five novels as the object of study, the thesis moveson to give an elaborated analysis of the two types of Isolation-IdentificationSyndrome: Intrapersonal Isolation-Identification Syndrome and InterpersonalIsolation-Identification Syndrome. Hopefully, the thesis might contribute to a morecomprehensive understanding of McCullers’s theme of spiritual isolation, which has auniversal significance as well as a profound uniqueness, and be of some help forfuture studies.