From Loss To Return-A Study On Three Junes From The Perspective Of Ethical Literary Criticism

American contemporary female writer Julia Glass(1956-) began to draw more and more attention after her debut, Three Junes, won the 2002 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. Before that, her short stories also received many awards, among which “Collies”, the first chapter of Three Junes, made her the winner of the William Faulkner-William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition in 1999. But Three Junes best demonstrates Glass’ s thinking pattern and writing style.This thesis attempts to analyze the awakening of characters’ ethical awareness and the writer’s ethical idea embodied in Three Junes. Through text analysis, this thesis will demonstrate the process of characters’ ethical awareness awakening by means of ethical literary criticism. First, the characters lose their ethical identities. The misplaced roles of the three primary elements --- husband, wife and son --- are presented through Maureen, Paul and Fenno Mc Leod. The relationship between Maureen and Paul is opposite to the traditional marital relationship and Fenno’s escape from his responsibility for family and the control of his parents clashes with the traditional ethical ideas. Then, when faced with the disintegration of the traditional family, three sons of the family are struggling between the parents centered family and personal benefits. Especially, Fenno is caught in the dilemma of whether to donate sperm to help his brother while Fern’s indulgence endangers her marriage. All of them are put into an ethical dilemma. But through all the struggles and rational selections, they return to their ethical identities and make the ethical choice to awaken their ethical awareness. The reunion of brothers, Fenno’s donation of sperms and brand new life of Fern prove that their choices put their lives back to balance.By probing into characters in Three Junes, this thesis reveals that one should recognize his or her ethical identity to get rid of the ethical dilemma, and that the ethical choice can be rationalized by improving one’s ethical awareness. The thesis also shows the practical significance of using the ethical literary criticism to analyze literary works. At the same time, Glass’ s ethical ideas are displayed that bloodline is the most powerful and initial connection between humans, and that the respect for bloodline and family equals the respect for life itself, which is also the basic ethical requirement of human society.