| Joyce Carol Oates,the famous contemporary American writer,whose early novel them was published with receiving the U.S.National Book Award for Fiction in 1970.This novel based on the description of the Wendalls' experiences that not only describes the poverty of the lower people,but also emphasizes their emptiness of spiritual life and the disillusion of their hopes.The whole story shows the lower people's life during the 1930 s to the 1960 s,and reveals the social contradictions,decadence and dark sides under the highly developed material civilization in the United States.From the research status at home and abroad,many of the scholars mainly focus on feminism,image analysis,theme and the others in this novel.However,few scholars have paid attention to the unique narrative features in it and analyzed the revelation of the multiple crises inside these different narrative spaces,which plays a great role in reflecting the whole living condition around the human being and inspiring people to quest an ideal living space.The thesis finds that there are multiple crises created by the spatial descriptions in them.Namely,they are the vagrant crisis in the physical space,the traumatic crisis in the psychological space and the violent crisis in the spatial form.Therefore,the paper starts from a new angle of view,on the basis of spatial narrative theory,to emphatically discuss the revelation of the multiple crises and to interpret the main characters' quest for the ideal living space.This thesis is composed of introduction,main body and conclusion.In the first part,it has a brief introduction of the writer and the work,reviews the studies on them both at home and abroad,identifies the literary critical theory used in this paper and puts forward the problems to be solved.The main body contains the following three chapters:Chapter one discusses the main characters Loretta,Jules and Maureen's need for a settled living environment based on the revelation of the vagrant crisis in the physical space.On the arrangement of the physical space,Oates respectively depicts the Wendall's crisis of constantly moving around without definite residence in the urban,Jules and Maureen's crisis of dropping out of school for the various rules in the school,grandma Wendall's crisis of avoiding medical help for dignity humiliated in the hospital,and Jules and Maureen's crisis of running away from home for the endless quarrels in their home.All of these reflect the vagrant crisis.The vagrant crisis reveals the main characters' vagrant attitudes but they still long for settlement,which emphasizes the main characters Loretta,Jules and Maureen's need for a settled living environment from the material level.Chapter two explores the protagonists Loretta,Jules,Maureen and Nadine's eagerness for a peaceful inner world based on the revelation of the traumatic crisis in the psychological space.On the descriptions of the psychological space,Oates respectively analyzes the crisis of Loretta who integrates positively into society to become corrupt,Jules who works actively for making money to become crazy,Maureen who studies hard for making progress to become morbid and Nadine who desires for freedom but to death.All of these reflect the traumatic crisis.Simultaneously,the traumatic crisis reflects the fragility and sensitivity of human nature but the protagonists try hard to attain the peace in their mind,which reveals the protagonists Loretta,Jules,Maureen and Nadine's eagerness for a peaceful inner world from the mental level.Chapter three argues the main characters Loretta,Jules and Maureen's pursuit for a harmonious social environment based on the revelation of the violent crisis in the spatial form.On the handle of the spatial form,Oates skillfully uses the repetition and combination of the words accelerates the crisis of human alienation to crime,the imagery metaphor shows the crisis of social decay to chaos,the flexible arrangement of the plots highlights the crisis of characters' inner redeemed to extreme and the juxtaposition of multiple stories and multiple themes strengthen the crisis of revenge and conflicts to bloodiness.All of these reflect the violent crisis.Meanwhile,the violent crisis embodies the turbulent social reality,which in return expresses the main characters Loretta,Jules and Maureen's pursuit for a harmonious social environment from the unification of the material and mental level.This paper draws a conclusion after the argumentation of the three chapters.The novel expresses the main characters' quest for an ideal living space.To be more specific,through the revelation of the multiple crises,the thesis conveys the protagonists' need for a settled living environment,their eagerness for a peaceful inner world and their pursuit for a harmonious social environment.The writer Oates tactfully uses the textual space to reveal the vagrant crisis,traumatic crisis and violent crisis in them.Her writing vividly draws the outline of the present situation of the lower people's social life,deepening the theme of the work.Besides,Oates strongly expresses her persistent quest for the ideal living space through revealing these different crises.The academic significance of the paper is to use the spatial narrative theory and to provide a new research point,which makes the thesis own certain innovation.In today's complex social life,people often come and go in the flowing space and experience the latent crises in those different spaces.The paper hopes people will seriously consider the spatial condition around them and realize the potential crises.Furthermore,the thesis is with the hope of enlightening all the human being to quest an ideal living space. |
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