Class and Race Issues in Heart Is a Lonely Hunter 析《心是孤独的猎手》中的阶级和种族问题文献综述

 2022-01-05 07:01

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文献综述

1. Introduction1.1 Research backgroundCarson McCullers (1917-1967), an America-born author, is best known for her novels about loneliness, distance and alienation between people. Isolation, poverty, despair and being unable to communication permeate her entire work. With a unique writing style, she was one of the most prominent American writers in the 1940s. The heart is a lonely hunter, for which McCullers won the fame to become a representative figure, has been chosen as one of the Pokka Twentieth Century English Novels.Why people feel lonely and lost in all her books? The authors miserable life experience and her role as a bisexual and disabled woman can be one reason to influence her writing; however, the social background is of more real historical significance. In the first 40 or 50 years of the 20th century, the United States went through a progressive period, Coolidges prosperity, Roosevelts New Deal, and World War II. As the second-class citizens, African Americans continued to fight hard for their basic civil rights of freedom and equality as well as political, economic, cultural and social rights in this drastic change. They were like goods, being sold and enslaved by white people. The black people suffered from racial discrimination and were regarded as degenerated race at that time. While at the same time, black intellectuals intended to improve their social status by writing or addressing speeches to awake black people to fight for their civil rights. African Americas communities in northern cities were growing rapidly. During the Great Depression, the black people lost their jobs and the unemployment rate ranked high. Moreover, they were still discriminated. However, President Roosevelt took action to relieve their burden, so that African Americans could earn a living and the ethnic consciousness of them has been further enhanced. Also, in the 1930s, their political status were enhanced and black cabinet appeared because President Roosevelt designated many African Americans as officials in his administration. As a southern writer, McCullers paid much attention to the role that African Americans played in The heart is a lonely hunter. In order to learn more about the loneliness and despair of African Americans in her book, this paper chooses to talk about the class and race issues in the book.1.2 Literature Review Carson McCullers is one of the most prominent southern-America female writers in the 1940s. Her five works that are highly acknowledged are The heart is a lonely hunter（1940), Reflections in a golden eye (1941), The members of the wedding (1946), The ballad of the sad cafe (1951) and the final one Clock without hands (1961). In all her five books, McCullers showed a unique style in writing. She was a genius who created her first excellent book The heart is a lonely hunter when she was at 22. McCullers, among many excellent authors in that period, such as William Faulkner and Mary Flannery O'Connor, mainly focused on spiritual isolation and permanent loneliness. Because of her bisexuality, she created these stories deeply and profoundly by writing about homosexuality, grotesque male and female bodies and gender indeterminacy and so on. In The heart is a lonely hunter, she wrote It was funny, too, how lonesome a person could be in a crowded house (1940). She believes that even love cannot help people get rid of loneliness. However, interest in studying the works of McCullers began quite late in China. For a long period of time, readers were not familiar with McCullers due to rare publishing of books about her. Dating back to 1979, Li Wenjun translated the book Ballad of the sad cafe. Since then people in China got a chance to know about McCullers and McCullers became popular with Chinese readers. This paper mainly takes The heart is a lonely hunter as an example to study McCullers presentation of racial and class problems in the 1930s. The disparity in the discussion surrounding the novel is doubtless a result of the variety of social issues the novel confronts.Rozier (2009: 1). As to this topic, critics at home and abroad have already made many comments from different perspectives. In her books, society is made up, not of a united community in which people support and care for each other, but of lonely, disconnected and alienated individuals (Downey, 2016). There, outsiders cannot make themselves understood or heard by others. The main characters who live in the southern part of America in The heart is a lonely hunter are isolated or lonely in both realistic world and inner part. A sense of loss is natural to the Southerner. Southern characters feel the weight of the past pressing upon them more heavily than characters of any other American region and perhaps more that characters found in any other literary genre (Champagne, 2008: 6). Loneliness can be viewed as a permanent topic in the book. Yu (2012) claims that the spiritual loneliness has something to do with seeking identification. Xiang (2017) states that by writing about loneliness, McCullers showed a pursuit of freedom. Critics also pay attention to the grotesque in the book. Reed (1990) thinks McCullers uses grotesque to express spiritual isolation. Marion (2004: 75) also argues in her essay, [f]or McCullers, the grotesque appears to reflect circumstances in her own life, growing out of a sense of inescapable isolation. Some critics care about the gender issues in the book. Stolarek (2012: 2-3) declares that Carson McCullers analyzes gender relations painstakingly. She excels at portraying complex relations between men and women, emphasizing the eccentric features of the characters. Protagonists are torn between their dreams and ideals and the norms by their relatives and communities. They are tortured not only by hierarchy, but also by their inner world and dreams. Bradshaw (1999) examines the The heart is a lonely hunter and deals with the essential difference in the vital relationship between the self and the other.Scholars analyse the book from the view of southern Gothic, which McCullers applies in her book. She can take the basic premise and conventional plots of Gothic and reconfigure them in the historical, geographic milieu of the mid-century American South. (Downey, 2016) thinks. Nancy B Rich (1986) deemed this novel as a declaration of war against Fascism in her The ironic parable of fascism in The heart is a lonely hunter. Also, some critics focus on the dialect used in the book. For instance, Kinnebrew (1983: 31) insists, It is in her longer fiction that the presence - or absence - of different dialects becomes most important.Whats more, two significant issues must be talked: class issue and race issue. Those are two profound problems that rooted in every aspect of America society. The black people, because of slavery, cannot have basic human civil rights. In the American South, the population was divided into two endogamous castes and segregation ensured their almost complete social separation, with whites dominant over blacks, Fuller (2011) states in Caste, race and hierarchy in the American South. But there are people who tried to stand up to fight against their enemies, struggling for the abolition of slavery. Furthermore, from the death of George Floyd in 2020 which demonstrated again the miserable life conditions of African Americans, people are aware that the discussion of class and race problems is still necessary. Although Laurie Champion (1991) emphasized racism in the novel, he failed to claim the intersection of class and race problem. Hence, this paper will focus on the class and race problems and their intersections.1.3 Need of the studyA detailed interpretation of the book The heart is a lonely hunter is necessary to show the social status and living conditions of African Americans in American South. Class and race issues can be obviously found in the book. Through analyzing class and race problems, the paper would be of benefit to introduce some deep reasons of injustices and discrimination in American society in the 1930s. Further, with the analysis of the intersections of racism and class oppression, readers could have a more profoundly understanding of the characters in the book. ReferencesBradshaw, C. (1999). Language and responsibility: The failure of discourse in Carson McCullerss The heart is a lonely hunter. Southern quarterly, 37,118-126.McCullers, C. (2008). The heart is a lonely hunter. New York: Penguin Grope.Champagne, R. C. (2008). Not your father's Southern grotesque: Female identity in the short fiction of Eudora Welty and Carson McCullers. Dallas: The University of Texas.Champion, L. (1991). Black and white Christs in Carson McCullerss The heart is a lonely hunter. Southern literary journal, 24, 47-52.Downey, D. (2016).The Gothic and grotesque in the novels of Carson McCullers. The palgrave handbook of the southern Gothic, 365-377. Fuller, C. J. (2011). Caste, race and hierarchy in the American South. Journal of the royal anthropological institute, 17(3), 604-621.Marion, C. A. (2004). Distorted traditions: The use of the grotesque in the short fiction of Eudora Welty, Carson McCullers, Flannery O Connor and Bobbie Ann Mason. Denton: UniversityofNorth Texas.Kinnebrew, M. J. (1983). Dialect in the fiction of Carson McCullers, Flannery OConnor and Eudora Welty. Houston: University of Houston. Reed, A. D. (1990). The isolated and grotesque world of Carson McCullers. Texas: East Texas State University. Rich, Nancy. B. (1986).The ironic parable of fascism in The heart is a lonely hunter. Southern literary journal, 25(3), 108-23.Rozier, J. (2005). Mourning and Melancholia in Carson McCullerss The heart is a lonely hunter. SouthCarolina: University of South Carolina.Stolarek, J. (2012). Femininity and masculinity in Carson McCullers selected novel - isolation, alienation, existential quest for identity and human relations. Warsaw: University of SiedIce向丽华（2017），《孤独,一个人的狂欢卡森麦卡勒斯生命及其作品分析》，《哈尔滨学院学报》，38(1)： 49-52。

余晓诗（2012），《论卡森麦卡勒斯作品中的孤独认同综合症》，硕士学位论文。

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