Predicaments And Self-redemption:John Cheever's Falconer

As one of the famous contemporary writers of the United States,John Cheever?1912-1982?was in the same period in the literary world such as Hemingway,Saul Bellow,J.D.Salinger and Updike in the history of literature.Cheever put his creative focus on the creation of short stories at the beginning of his career.Even though his short stories are profound and well-known,but most of them are published in the magazine“New Yorker”,which is regarded as an entertainment-oriented magazine.And the critics focus on his short story,and for his short stories,he is called“Chekov of American Suburbs”.The excessive spread short stories have,to a certain extent,suppressed the critics'attention to his novels so that even if Cheever's five novels have won prizes,they have been tepid,and there are also blanks of literary researches on them to be filled by latecomers.Falconer,Cheever's fourth novel,was published in 1977.Most critics think highly of it to be Cheever's best work.This novel mainly describes the protagonist Farragut's predicament everywhere in life on the one hand and on the other hand his purgatory-like baptism in Falconer prison and the process which he gains rebirth through self-redemption ultimately.With Space Theory which has experienced the spatial turn in late 20^th century,this paper tries to explore the theme that predicament is everywhere and self-redemption is indispensable from a new perspective to alert people to take care of the social and spatial factors behind the theme from a multidimensional perspective.This paper is divided into four parts.The introduction part is mainly about the purpose of the writing,gives a brief introduction to Cheever,his novel Falconer,and the research status of Cheever and Falconer at home and abroad.At the same time,it introduces the theoretical framework of this paper,including the development and spatial turn of western space theory,material space,spiritual space and social space of the mutual link.The first chapter explores the material and spiritual factors that cause Farragut's physical and psychological predicament within the material and spiritual space.Chapter Two,mainly explores the social factors that Farragut cannot get rid of.Indifferent and suffocate social space allures the protagonist,a middle class intellectual,to degeneration step by step.The third chapter focuses on several important events that Farragut has experienced in his life and how these events have gradually awakened him out of the predicaments and achieved self-redemption.