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Specifically speaking, the Beat Generation, in other words, the Beats, usually refers to a group of American post-World War II writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired.(Bill Morgen, 2012) These writers do not always keep on the rails. Even some of their behaviors are not acceptable in the modern society. Although they have drawn a mixed response from all sectors of society, it can not be denied that they have pushed the metamorphosis of the post-war society from spiritual level. Besides, generally speaking, the Beat Generation represents all the people who lost themselves in the material world and behaved crazy, such as Holden.
America was experiencing a golden age in the 1950s and early 1960s. Materialistically the commercialized society was confronted with a prosperity that it had never reached before. However, at the same time, the material prosperity did not provide people with what they had expected in all aspects, especially their ideals and values. In fact, the soaring ambition about material affluence formed a sharp contrast with the actual poverty of people’s spiritual life. What Holden’s behaviors presented in this novel is exactly as close as what the so called “the Beats” did during that time.
The loss of childhood and innocence has been attracting in the literature field. There is a hypothesis that if we can get back to childhood or the sublime initial state, and keep spontaneous, then those social and personal problems would no longer exist, which is an lament for the loss of people’s innocence and the depravity of man. With the advancing of material civilization, on the contrary, there is no simultaneous development as people expected. On the one hand, scientific and technological processes have made significant contributions to human being; on the other hand, they have brought disasters and serious threat to the survival of mankind. As a result, general concern has been paid to human being’s destiny. To some extent, the discussion of growth is a concern for the past, the present and the future of human being.
This thesis is trying to figure out the protagonist’s growing process, from the perspective of his inner change and a comparative study between The Catcher in the Rye and the narrative structure of Bildungsroman.
There are three main research questions:霍尔顿在《麦田里的守望者》中的逃离和回归社会Holden’s Escaping and Returning to the Society in The Catcher in the Rye
How many stages are there in Holden’s growing process according to the narrative structure of Bildungsroman?
How did Holden behave in each stage?源'自-751;文,论`文'网]www.751com.cn
What can we learn from Holden’s growing process?
Documentary method, content analysis method and comparative analysis method are used in this thesis.
The body of this thesis consists of three parts. The first part focuses on the innocence of Holden. The second part mainly deals with the analysis of how Holden tried to escape from the hypocritical material world. The third part is about the epiphanies occurred during his struggles and how he finally returned to the society.
1.2 Literature Review
It is obvious that the study of The Catcher in the Rye can be pided into two steps: The first stage is an initial one in the 1980s and the studies during that time are mainly about the translation and introduction. The latter stage in the 1990s becomes much more thorough and the studies step onto a flourish stage including varieties of perspectives. There are mainly four aspects of the perspectives: the theme and value, the imagine of the protagonist, the language features and the use of symbolism in the novel.