The Death Theme And Tragic Consciousness In Joyce Carol Oates’ Novels

Joyce Carol Oates is an American writer, known by the ubiquitous presence of "death" and "violence" in her works. Yet researches on the "death theme" have, so far, been rarely conducted. This paper, including three chapters, explores the transition of the "death theme" of her writings by reading works throughout Oates’s writing career and studies her understandings on death and new birth during different life stages.In the first chapter, this paper studies Oates’s works in1970s, which were overwhelming with presence of "death" and "violence". The symptoms are familiar that the body of characters were often destroyed at any time. Characters in these works at this time all ended in tragedies before they surmounted this sort of human emotions. She was actually telling us to confront death and accept it with a positive mind. The following two parts center on Oates’ writings in the21st century. Her exploration into death during this period goes to two directions. On the one hand, influenced by animism, Nietzsche’s thought, etc., Oates rendered death a breath of mystification to provoke readers’ awe to life. On the other hand, Oates attempted to depict an empty and lonely mind as well as a lifeless life of modern people with somewhat transformed death. The tragedies of modern people in her novels represent the moderns’ attempts to transcend death by separating themselves from the society or self-separating.Oates keeps a close tract with the era and digs into the depth of fast moderns’ life so as to present those decayed souls to us. And her works guide us to reflect on the life meanings and rethink its value.