On Political Ideology In Cities Of The Red Night

William S.Burroughs is one of the founders of “Beat Generation”,and is also a highly controversial figure in American literature.Cities of the Red Night is a gothic fiction written by William S.Burroughs during US-Soviet Cold War in the beginning of 20 th century.Compared with his former workers,Burroughs creates the gentleman type of drug addicts and homosexuals.They insist self-control and self-management to pursue freedom and anarchism.Even in the “Fore!” of his Cities of the Red Night,Burroughs expresses his dreaming liberal principles through the French and American revolutions and the liberal revolutions of 1848.He aims to build a Utopian world that Captain Mission has established under the management of Libertatia.This thesis describes Burroughs' freedom-seeking in Cities of the Red Night through the theories of post-colonialism and discourse,and the phenomenon of imaginative conspiracy in American ideology.Firstly,Burroughs pursues freedom of marginalized population by casting off domestic political and economical control.Drug addicts and homosexuals are defined as the “others” by the society and are governed with medical,economical and political intervention without political rights.They are equal with the virus and conspirators that destroy the society.Secondly,Burroughs shows his fear of the “red scare” through those created characters in his works.In this novel,he finds out the origin of virus variation is radiation of northwest.Communism builds,to some extents in Burroughs' creation,a free interzone where without any control,but communism destroys the freedom in the end.Thirdly,Burroughs builds his own ideological emperor and a free Utopian interzone in his Cities of the Red Night.Under the background of space competition between America and the Soviet Union,Burroughs creates a space mythology in his writing to pursue freedom and eternity in writing space and in outer space exploration.Burroughs uses Montage strategy to imitate space travel which is beyond the limitations of time and space.By studying the text,the thesis finds that Burroughs possesses strong ideology of imperialism and orientalism during the period of pursuing freedom.Burroughs expresses his revolt and his anti-soviet ideology when describing the depressed American political atmosphere;meanwhile,he shows his inveterate orientalism in conspiracy ideology.And when establishing his Utopia world,Burroughs shows definite thought of hegemony fear of red scare.He insists on using colonial expansion to gain political and discourse power thus gains the freedom.And the reason why this Utopia in the novel is destroyed is attributed to the explosion caused by oriental firecrackers.