"New England Writing" From John Cheever's "Wopshaw Series"

As an outstanding American short story writer in the 20 th century,John Cheever has opened up a new realm of his own in the field of novel through “the Wapshot series” novels,showing his amazing artistic ability of telling stories.These two novels,The Wapshot Chronicle and The Wapshot Scandal,vividly embody the local color of New England and show the ups and downs of the wapshot family for centuries in the seaport town of New England.In the processing of time,Cheever examines the location of “The town of St.Botolphs” and the specific group of “The Wapshot Family” in the long river of time and constructs the grand“lineage of St.Botolphs” by using the reproduction of the past through genealogy and family diary.If we put the evolution history of the Wapshot family in the historical and cultural perspective,we will find that the choices of members of each generation in the family are influenced by the social values of the different times in the American history.This coherent description of history and the past reflects Cheever's profound understanding of the role that the culture in the past plays in shaping people' minds.In the space layout,Both Cheever's cities and suburbs are like “wasteland” and “ruins of civilization” that have lost the vitality of their inner soul.The landscape that the characters perceive as they walk through the urban space presents a side of differentiation and isolation,and what they experience is the contradiction between the superficial order and the inner emptiness.What the middle class in these kinds of suburban spaces feel spiritually are the conservative decay,the apathy caused by scientism,the constraints brought by forbidden desire and the futility in their struggle against mediocrity.Moreover,transforming from the urban space to the suburban space,people can't build a bridge of communication between the already declining town and the modern efficient world.The fragmentary structure in space transformation is loose and fractured,but it is consistent with the inherent theme of the fragmentary characteristics of modern society.Cheever's way of depicting New England,which interweaves time and space,has unique cultural value.He not only absorbs the nutrition of the American literary creation tradition represented by Hawthorne,but also has similar thematic concerns with the writers who shows the local color of New England.At the same time,he also shows his distinct individuality with originality.Through artistic expression,the writer also takes a double perspective on New England culture,which not only presents the antagonism and reconciliation between spiritual and sensory aspects of New England culture,but also dialectically and objectively analyzes the dual nature of this culture,which is both narrow and desirable.In addition,Cheever also explores deeply into people's survival condition and treats the anxiety,despair and quirks of the human spirit in a calm and understanding attitude.Meanwhile,he examines the excellence and shortcoming in human life from the perspective of ethics and incorporates it into the complex flow of life and humanity.Compared with reproducing the historical background of social custom,Cheever is more interested in light and dark in the complicated struggle inside of ordinary people's inner world.He is good at using a calm,humorous and unique style,suggesting the secret distortion of the individual's psychological state: the orderly social life and decent social role in suburb,middle-class residents' actually bizarre disorder of temperament along with painful and lonely heart,form two opposing sides which does not coordinate with each other.These ordinary people either delude themselves into creating a false and fragile link between the surface and the reality in order to escape the harm of the nightmare;or quietly and doggedly pursue one's own dreams,balancing the frightening world of technology with imagination,hope,and love.The ambiguous,vague struggle and reconciliation between dream and nightmare,light and dark,order and chaos,constitute the attractive artistic tension in Cheever's works.