Violence in postwar american fiction
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Date
2001
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Abstract
The thesis is an attempt to investigate the aspect of violence in postwar american fiction The study is basically centered on the major novels of Norman Mailer.
Following the approach adopted in the analysis, which is a combination of the Marxist and psychoanalytical methods, the first step in the work consists in a survey of the political and socio-cultural conditions in postwar that dominated international affairs. It became the land of unprecedented affuence with a civilization based on science and technology and sustained by capitalism. Therefore, most Americans looked forward to the postwar years with an air of optimism having a strong belief in the traditional Amercan Dream of success and self-fulfilment. Yet, ithin a brief time such optimism vanished and was replaced by a sense of confusion and uncertainty. America became a land in which the social stratification was based on wealth and adventages. Besides, the outbreak of the Cold War, the constant threat of communism and scientific progress that encouraged the invention of more sophisticated and destructive weapons intensified the air of pessimism and presented a permanent threat to the psychic stability of the American individual. These conditions largely contributed to the prevalence and spread of violence in society and its overwheiming presence in fiction. Regarding the pluralistic nature of the American society, violence is first briefly examined in works of fiction written by representative figures of the major minority groups in America. Being violent and rebellious in his personal life and in writing , Norman Mailer is introduced as the writer who projects the whole of America with its ills and obsessions in his novels. In the novels under examination, violence takes different forms and is generated by various factors and conditions in society. It is either psychological, physical or verbal. In the war novel The Naked and the Dead violence echoes the totalitarian America that emerged after the Second World War while in The Deer Park and An America Dream psycholobical and physical violence appear as the basic characteristics of the American society during the 1950 's and 1960 's. The demand of conforminty and the threat of the extinction of the individual self incite individuals to resort to criminal acts and aggressive behaviour to restore a lost identity in the modern american jungle Why Are We in Vietnam ? presents the linguistic violence through_the use of obscence language that manifests the brutality and criminality of America in Vietnam. From the study of these novels, violence appears as the destiny of America because it transcends the failure of the original Dream.
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Keywords
Violence, Postwar american