The Alienation Of Characters In Donald Barthelme’s Snow White

Donald Barthelme is a distinguished American postmodernist in the20thcentury, whocreates lots of novels in his whole life. His novels depict a number of abnormal figures who losepersonality and reveal contemporary social problems. His mighty pen has touched upon theessential problem of the contemporary capitalist society: human alienation. As Barthelme’srepresentative work, Snow White is a parody of the classical fairy tale of Snow White and theSeven Dwarfs by Grimm. Characters in Barthelme’s Snow White are alienated in some degree.This novel is highly praised by readers and literary critics, and the former studies, however,mainly analyze it from views of postmodern features, feminism, etc. While, there are few studieson people’s alienation in the novel and the causes behind the alienation.This thesis tends to apply the related views on alienation of Erich Fromm who is a famousAmerican psychoanalyst and an important representative of the Frankfurt School of WesternMarxism, discusses the characters’ self-alienation, interpersonal alienation and social alienationin Snow White, and probes into the causes of the alienation. Fromm inherits and develops relatedtheory of Freud and Marx, and expounds the alienation in the contemporary capitalist society. Hebelieves that alienation is a mode of psychological experiment, and it is inevitable during theprocess of human development, and the roots of alienation mainly lie in human nature’sdiscrepancy, people’s psychological mechanism of escaping from freedom and the socialcharacter of people.This thesis is divided into six chapters.Chapter One chiefly introduces Donald Barthelme’s life experience and the main content ofhis Snow White, and illustrates the background and purpose of the study.Chapter Two is about literature review and theoretical basis. Literature review refers tostudies and criticism on Snow White at home and abroad. The part of theoretical basis mainlyexpounds the origin and development of the concept of alienation, and generalizes Fromm’sview on alienation. This chapter points that the alienation is chiefly embodied in humanalienation which includes people’s self-alienation, interpersonal alienation and social alienation,and this agrees with the alienation of characters reflected in Snow White.Chapter Three mainly explores self-alienation of the main characters in Snow Whiteaccording to Fromm’s opinion of human nature’s discrepancy, and concludes that human’sinherent contradictions are the internal causes of people’s self-alienation. This chapter mainlyanalyzes the natures and features of Snow White, Paul and the Seven Dwarfs and points that theself-alienation of the characters are leaded to by their discrepancy of existence. Analyzing fromthis aspect helps make clear the roots of human alienation and discover a new way to understand the human alienation during the process of human development.Chapter Four mainly analyzes interpersonal alienation among characters based on Fromm’sview on psychological mechanism of escaping from freedom, and explores the causes of thealienation. This chapter discloses the interpersonal alienation among family members, friendsand other characters. The alienation in the family is reflected in that there is no mutual care andtrust and the alienation among friends is mainly embodied in the complicated and distortedrelationship between Paul and Seven Dwarves, Jane and Snow White. Finally, this chapterindicates that the interpersonal alienation is brought about by the psychological tendencies ofabuse, abused, destructiveness and automaton conformity. It provides evidence for furtherexploration of the causes of human alienation by means of the psychological mechanism ofescaping from freedom.Chapter Five principally analyzes the social alienation of the characters from Fromm’sconcept of Social Character，deeply analyze the causes of people’s social alienation. This chapterchiefly illustrates the relationship between characters and social institutions: Snow White andschool, Bill and court, and the President and national system, figures out that the socialinstitutions are devoid of social responsibility and sense of morality. And this chapter arrives atthat the unproductive social character of people and the social background of capitalist systemare the main causes of the alienation. Analyzing people’s social alienation from this aspect offersreference for fully understanding the causes of human alienation, and in the meanwhile, it isbeneficial to better understand the development of human society in order to build a soundsociety.Chapter Six is conclusion of the thesis. Firstly, it summarizes the alienation of thecharacters in Snow White and the causes of the alienation, stresses the significance of analyzingthis novel through Fromm’s related theory. Secondly, this chapter points out that there arelimitations of this study because of academic depth and limited materials, this study is notsystemic or profound enough and it needs improvement. At last, there are predictions of the trendof further study.