毕业设计（论文）-对卡罗尔的爱的分析.doc

J I A N G S U U N I V E R S I T Y本 科 毕 业（设 计）论 文 An Analysis on Carols Love学 院 名 称： 江苏大学 专 业 班 级： 05 级英语教育 学 生 姓 名： 指导教师姓名： 指导教师职称： 教授 2008 年 11月AcknowledgementsFirst of all, I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to my respectable supervisor Professor Wang. who provided me with valuable advice and patiently guided me through writing this thesis, by challenging me to define and refine my ideas through many drafts. Without his painstaking work, the completion of the thesis would not have been possible.My profound gratitude must also be paid to many other professors who have helped me with the improvement of linguistic study during the three years. They are Professor Teng , Professor Zhang. Their earnest teaching and enlightening are of great help for my study and research.Finally, I also want to express my heartfelt thanks to my beloved parents and husband for their love and nourishment. Their belief in me was my inspiration for initiating this project. An Analysis on Carols LoveABSTRACTSince the publication of Main Street, Americans for the first time disillusioned from the beautiful edifice of vast American country. The work focuses on the idealistic reformer, Carol Kennecotts sad life in Main Street, and a street of a typical America country town in the central prairie. This thesis attempts to analyze its effects by casting views upon her love relationships with three men. The three relationships are one of the most vivid and enlivening parts in the work. They indicate the process of the death of an idealist but the resurrection of a housewife.Specifically, Carols moves the author love stories in Main Street .he believes that most critics ignore her three relationships with three men but as one of the most refreshing and enlivening elements in Main Street, they deserve more attention. Key words: main street, three love relationships, idealist, and housewife对卡罗尔的爱的分析摘要大街出版后，美国人第一次从对广袤美国乡村的美好想象中清醒过来。大街着重于刻画卡罗尔.肯尼科,一名理想主义改革者在大街-中部平原一个普通而具代表性的农村小镇的一条街道上的悲伤生活。本文将关注她生活中与三位男性的三段爱情，并试图以此分析它的作用。这三段感情是大街中最生动的描写之一。他们展示了一个理想主义者如何理想破灭，继而成为一名地道的家庭主妇的过程。确切的说，卡罗尔的爱情故事在大街中被作家改编了。他相信卡罗尔生活中与三位男性的三段爱情是被大多数评论者忽略的 ,但是作为大街中最清晰的元素之一，他们值得给予更多的关注。关键词：大街,三段爱情, 理想主义者,家庭主妇 Table of Contents Acknowledgements.iiAbstractiiiIntroduction.11 Some questions about Carol love1 1To examine Carols love as an idealistic reformer and to note its effect32Review on Carol Kennicotts relationships42 1 Analysis on Carols attitude towards love 42 2 Description of her love relations.53 Interpretation of her love relations.53 1 Guy Pollock .53 2 Erik Val Borg63.3 Will Kennicott 7Conclusion.8BIBLIOGRAPHY.10Introduction Main Street pulled up the wings of the stage of American literature for Sinclair Lewis magnificent performance in the 1920s. Sinclair Lewis, the contributor of Main Street, was born and lived his early years in Sauk Center, a typical raw Minnesota prairie town with some3000 people. Much like Gopher Prairie, the place where characters of Main Street were set, Sauk Center was newly shaped settlement for immigrants from Europe, where people of different origins assembled and tried best to consort with each other. Life lent the writer immense source and muse. His father E.J.Lewis was a local prosperous doctor who he revered and resented and was the prototype of Will Kennicott, Carols husband in Main Street. The unhappy early years in the country familiarized Lewis with the real life in small towns over the vast American land, and he became one of the first to challenge the myth of happy, quintessentially American town life style. Between 1914 and 1919, he produced 5 apprentice novels and made moderate success by developing his own version of the need to escape the confines of provincial life. By 1918, he was determined to write an honest, realistic book about small-town America. And it was Main Street, which culminated in its caustic power and made him a thunderous name. Main Street was published in the late autumn of 1920 and it became a best seller at the Christmas rush. Within a year, it sold 295, 000 copies, w hich was described as “the most sensational event in American publishing history”(Sinclair ,1981:55) Why the book achieved such a success is a question indispensable with its social context.As entering the 20th century, U.S. ushered in a large-scale social transformation. It was a reform spreading from the urban districts to the rural area. Its industrial especially machine age was at the corner. As the descending of rural area in social economic life, tens of thousands of farm youths, along with flooding European immigrants joined in or was grappled into the phenomenal reform. With the sufficient labor force supply and the ensuing rapidly swelling market demand, Americas industrialization gained momentum in the era. We shall become as corrupt as in Europe, and go to eating one another as they do there.” Thomas Jefferson referred to bustling city life as early as in 1787 (N.J.: 1967:477)As no drawback could hinder the forward pace of productivity as well as urbanization, Americans never got rid of their mixed feelings toward the city: the more urbanized they became, the more they exaggerated the virtues of their rural origins. The city came to symbolize the loss of innocence, the corruption of virtues, and the ultimate triumph of materialism. The tradition of treasuring rural origin was passed down.On the other hand, with the economic booming, ordinary people were in a poor condition. They were exploited crushingly and profited little beyond their means. “We work in his mill. We live in his houses. Our children go to his schools. We spend our leisure in his reading room. Our children play in his street. We go to his hospital. We are arrested by his constable and tried by his magistrates. And when we die, we are buried in his cemetery.” (N.J.: 1967:58) “A new American voice was loosed on the American ear” (Sinclair, 1920:62) Main Street is a merciless portrait of narrow-minded American Midwest rural town. It means cheap shops, ugly public buildings, and citizens who are bound by rigid conventions. With regard to American tradition which exalts the rural areas, the publication of main street is iconoclastic and a call for scrutiny of vast underdeveloped rural areas.Since 1920, lots of critics have spent their attention to the work. There are conclusive comments upon it, among which what is the most necessary to be referred to is that Main Street and other famous Sinclair Lewiss contributions, though eminent for its skillful application of language, are bound to strike an impression on readers that they are constructed with theme-oriented mind to such an extent that their storylines seem synthetic and heroes and heroines are monotonous. Indeed, it appears that its heroines mission to reform the town is much hummed and even harped on. And as it is, we can find limited amounts of appreciation from the view of literature criticism but many more of that on the author, the social context and the works sociological meanings. It is a great pity, because by plunging into Main Street, the author savor its reading and enjoy himself much. He holds that critics might omit something and there are still many treasures in Main Street worthy of digging into.1 Some questions about Carols love 1.1To examine Carols love as an idealistic reformer and to note its effect. There are questions about her love worthwhile to put forth: what kind of love does Carol crate for? Does she find true love and is Carol immoral? Furthermore, if Carol has her prince charming, does she marry him? And if Carol is a flighty and filthy girl, obviously she undeserved readers sympathy, but if she is not, what leads to her sad life and then readers sentiment? Through analysis of Carols attitude towards love and exploration of her love relationships, something can be achieved. Actually, she finds her true love but as the existing marriage relation binds her with Dr. Will, she resists her true feeling and fails to get married to her lover to remain to be Mrs. Kennicott until the end. That upsets readers very much. The deep root of her failure in love lies with her idealistic reform to the town in which she weighs poorly little and even needs her husbands protection. By this, we can see how hard a woman to live alone in the world and how she becomes aware of the reality and accept it to make a tragedy of an idealist happen. 2 Review on Carol Kennicotts relationships2.1 Analysis on Carols attitude towards love Idealistic Carol Milford leaves the city she lives and becomes Mrs. Kennicott in Gopher Prairie. She is a protagonist and emancipated woman and is in conflict with the conformity of Gopher Prairie. The town is far from the romantic picture of open and democratic American community. Carol joins the clubs, the Library Board to encourage reading, and learns to play bridge, but she soon finds out that many things are dangerous subjects in conversation and need to be forbidden. Her husband Dr. Kennicott is reliable but unimaginative, adoring her without really understanding her. She instantly becomes disillusioned from a beautiful world edified in mind and plunges fully into her reform, in which every effort ends in vain. She is tainted with sentiments and vacillating between escaping and accommodating. In the process, Carol is confronted with spiritual loneliness. After flirting with a lawyer Guy Pollock, she meets a young Swedish tailor Erik Val Borg and has some crush on him, who eventually leaves the town, before they start to do things immoral. Carol continues her loneliness, and determines to break away with the dismaying town. Thanks to her husbands apprehension, she can leave away to the east and becomes a white-collar lady in government department. But her resolution is overcome by his husbands righteous devotion and laudatory admiration. At last, she returns to Gopher Prairie with his husband, lives and will live a normal Midwest rural town life.The story demonstrates the process of how an idealistic woman gets more sophisticated from the fail of reforming a decrepit town and more down-to-earth by acting as a normal housewife. Whats more, the process indicates Carols attitude towards love. Process of reform dominates her love. In twists and turns of her reform, she becomes increasingly desired of a spiritual companion and finds one after the other. Not until the reform is still crippled in the end, does she know her role to be a housewife. It can be churched that her attitude towards love gradually in depends andrips along with her attitude towards reform. Carol, an idealistic callow school graduate nearly blank with love experience, then an unsecured, lonely and straying bride, at last a conventional and motherly housewife, fails in her reform and love as well. 2.2 Description of her love relationsCarol finds little resonance in Gopher Prairie in her high thinking except from several friends. Among them, Guy Pollock and Erik Val Borg appear closer than her friends. As the same as Carol, they are the village rebels. Guy is a bachelor lawyer who loves poetry and is a prime victim of the “Village Virus,” a deathlike inability to live elsewhere, and Erik, a dandyish, slightly effeminate culture loving young man. Carol has shifting attitude toward her husband. She experiences admiration and love for his steady fast behaviors as a doctor but mockingly indifference with him for Gopher routines, his un-imagination and a little rudeness. She carries on flirtations first with Guy until she grows weary of his “love of dead elegance,” and then more seriously with Erik, stopping short of actually sleeping with him. All these have added to the liveliness of the work.3 Interpretation of Carols love relations3.1 Guy Pollock “It is a dear loyal town” Vida Sherwin, a liberal high school teacher, said when self-introduced to Carol. At the same time, she described Guy Pollock, a lawyer as the second person to whom Carol could safely express her feeling of “a tiny bit ugly” toward the town. As Carols initial confidence to change the towns appearance is still strong, she envisages Guy Pollack as a perfect companion. Without much contact, only the encountering or even thinking of him could stir embarrassment and delight in her. What attract Carol so much is nothing but Guys open-mindedness and imaginativeness. Anything unrelated to her town planning, just said ahead, such as fortune and status, is trepid. In a situation, Carol happened to have knocked at Guys office door, and was invited to have a stay. She surmounted the anxiety that to call on a man would be indecent in the town and went in. Their topic was the “village virus” and how to exterminate it. She asked impulsively:” You, why do you stay here? “I have the Village Virus.” “It sounds dangerous.” “It is more dangerous than the cancer that will certainly get me at fifty unless I stop this smoking. The Village Virus is the germ, whichits extraordinarily like the hookwormit infects ambitious people who stay too long in the provinces. Youll find it epidemic among lawyers and doctors and ministers and college-bred merchants-all these people who have had a glimpse of their swamp. Im a perfect example.” She could not comment. She pictured herself running across the room to pat his hair. She saw that his lips were firm, under his soft faded mustache. she sat still, and maundered,” I know. Perhaps it will get me. Some day Im going”“Guy! Cant we do something in the town? Really?”“No, we cant!” He disposed of it like a judge ruling out an improper objection; returned to matters less uncomfortably energetic: Curious. Most troubles are unnecessary. We have Nature beaten; we can make her grow wheat; we can keep warm when she sends blizzards. So we raise the devil just for pleasurewars, politics, race-hatreds, and labor-disputes. Here in Gopher Prairie weve cleared the fields, and become soft, so we make ourselves unhappy artificially, at great expense and exertion: Methodists disliking Episcopalians, the man with the Hudson laughing at the man with the flivver. The worst is the commercial hatredthe grocer feeling that any man who doesnt deal with him is robbing him. What hurts me is that it applies to lawyers and doctors as much as to grocers. The doctorsyou know about thathow your husband and Westlake and Gould dislike one another.” (Sinclair, 1920: 86) Obviously, Guy is a hackneyed self-alleged victim and a false reformer because he doesnt support Carol by dealing with her dream like “a judge ruling out an improper objections”. But he made Carol have crush on him for his outspoken discontentment and revealing “insight” of penny-picking medical business in disfavor of husband, which, combined with his acts, in my opinion, is but an exaggeration for verbal attack and conspiracy of flirtation. For fear of the protrusive scrutiny, they broke up the conversation. In retrospect, Carol even thought of not having kissed Guy and puzzled whether her prince charming had come. But the one thing she could affirm was unwillingness to hurt Will. She was fond of Will (not in love). She kept well conscious as a married woman. This length of love came to a near end after Carol had assisted her husbands operation on a poor man of acute illness. Wills straightforwardness and miraculous quality as an effective lifesaver much astounded her. And for the first time the reality of the doctors household was colored by her pride. And ideals of town planning, as well as Guy Pollock, were cast aside for a while. In a word, She confuses the feeling of love with admiration. And as she is attracted by Guys some quality, she instantly gets disillusioned.From their long conversation, the author also foretells some future events. What is worthwhile to refer to is that devil social phenomena Guy raved about is at large truth, while Carol denied them. It can be read as Sinclairs in sinuous sarcasm towards his society and his foresight of the dooming death of an idealist. 3.2 Erik Val Borg The love between Carol and Erik Val Borg is much appealing and highly romanticized. Erik is a much promising young man with a Hellenic face, working brain, and high mind. Unfortunately, he comes from poor immigrant family, receives limited education and has to make a living by dressmaking. For his disadvantages, many rumored gossips have been ejected behind his back in the discriminative town. With the essence of innocence and ambition, he has a shadow of Carol. Before meeting, they have heard a lot about each other.Carol is profoundly in tested in the much-told man and desires to see him but feels somewhat anxious and bashful. Eventually she overcomes the bad feeling and comes into contact with him. She has a leap in mind from the gossiped image of Erik to what she really feels about him. Then gradually:She wanted to see Erik. She wanted some one to play with! There wasnt even so dignified and sound an excuse as having Kennicotts trousers pressed; when she inspected them, all three pairs looked discouragingly neat. Actually, Erik impresses her with quality of “Greek God”, though acting in an ungodliness way, stitching and ironing. He reads handy books sitting alongside the lake, not as what is said to be pretentious. His manner is straightforward and decorous, neither to be effeminate and foul. What strikes most a cord on Carol would be his