On Existence Predicaments In Olive Kitteridge

Elizabeth Strout(1956-)is a contemporary American writer.Her works reflect her concerns and reflections about contemporary social issues.Olive Kitteridge won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2009.The novel is about the ordinary life of the ordinary people in a small town and the spiritual crisis of characters and the alienated interpersonal relationship.It reflects the existence predicaments that exist in the contemporary American society.Based on the relevant philosophy theory of Erich Fromm's theory of love,the thesis tries to analyze the existence predicaments of characters and the ways to break through the predicaments in Olive Kitteridge.The body of this paper is divided into three parts.The first two parts demonstrate the manifestations and reasons of the existence predicaments of characters.The first part explores the predicaments of the spiritual world of individuals,which are manifested in two parts: strong loneliness and anxiety.The second part explores the predicaments in interpersonal relationships,which are manifested in the alienation of family relationship and neighborhood relationship.By analyzing the reasons of the existence predicaments of the characters,the author points out it is necessary to solve the problems from the root in order to get out of the predicaments.Therefore,the last part of the thesis explores the ways to break through the predicaments.The author tries to console and soothe the soul to those in predicaments through the way of escaping from the original family and returning to the new family under the premise of real love.Olive Kitteridge seems to depict the ordinary life of a common character;in fact it reflects the existence predicaments of people in the contemporary society.Strout reveals the predicaments of human kind through the novel and maps out the real condition of modern society.This paper reflects the author's deep reflection on the predicaments of modern people and her philosophical thinking on the meaning of life.