The Spiritual Dilemma And Salvation Of "Modern People"

As the5th work written by Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad, which is alsoregarded as one of her best novels ever, has won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction. It consists of13independent short stories describing different lives of a group of rock teenagers from1970to2020. In nearly50years, while these rock teenagers are fully enjoying the convenience broughtby the fast development of economy and technology, they are suffering the enormous spiritualpressure from the invisible outer world and the imbalance of their personality structures. Allthese pressures lead to their spiritual dilemma and it is quite hard for them to extricatethemselves from the spiritual dilemma. The great variety of weird spirit symptoms in the novelare the real pictures of “modern people” who are in the spiritual dilemma. When one’s spiritualpressure reaches a certain level, the psychological self-defense mechanism will begin to play itsrole and the positive use of it can save them from the anxiety of spiritual dilemma so that one canobtain opportunities to learn and find more effective ways or strategies to reach the balance ofone’s personality and step out of the spiritual dilemma.In this thesis, on one hand, the process of the main characters’ imbalanced personality to itsbalanced one is analyzed from the view of Freud’s Psycho-Analysis Theory, which is inaccordance with Freud’s personality theory; on the other hand, the thesis goes further to explorethe novel in terms of Freudian concepts according to Freud’s Psycho-Analysis Theory, such aschild neuroses, trauma, libidinal energy, anxiety, etc. What’s more, the thesis will probe into thereasons that cause the spiritual dilemma of these protagonists on the basis of an analysis of thesocial and family aspects, and how the main characters positively use self-defense mechanism toreach the balance of the personality structure and then step out of spiritual dilemma. The noveldemonstrates the process of the main characters’ stepping out spiritual dilemma to show howwe should do to reach the integration of personality and spirit while dealing with the hugepressure from the society, families, lives and the relationship between the opposite sex, etc.Meanwhile, the novel not only reveals the author Jennifer Egan’s attention to the spiritualsituation of “modern people” but also displays her immense focus on the integrity and harmonyof the spirit of “modern people”, which is the charm of the novel that can strike a chord with“modern people”.