Acknowledgments
I would like to begin by acknowledging associate professor Yu Jing at Shanghai Institute of Technology. Without her constant encouragement and guidance, this paper could not have reached the present form. Miss Yu has spared much of her precious time for me, reading and revising my paper—paragraph by paragraph, sentence by sentence. She also carefully underlined the mistakes which I made in my thesis. During this time, she gave me a lot of support and encouragement and all these gave me confidence to move on with my work.
In addition, many people have given me a hand while I was writing this paper,. When I met some difficulties, my teachers and friends encouraged me to overcome those difficulties. Therefore, I would also like to express my thanks to them for their excellent ideas and generous help and support to me.20099
The assistance and support from my dearest friends Joy and Derek also demand recognition. They are not only my close friends, but also source of ideas. They gave me their suggestions and time in listening to me and helping me work out my problems during the difficult course of the thesis.
Special thanks go to my families, as always, they have been incredible. Though living far from me, my father, mother and sister gave me a lot of care and profound love, which is the permanent support for me. Their consistent encouragement and love mean a lot more than I can say.

Abstract
Liz Murray is regarded as a miracle American girl who has overcome tremendous odds to go from “Homeless to Harvard”, and has turned her life story into an American bestseller. She is best known for her autobiography Breaking Night: a Memoir of Forgiveness, Survival, And My Journey from Homeless To Harvard.

Liz Murray’s autobiography tells the story how she changed her life from the surroundings of Hippies. The Hippies ignore marriage and family, conceptually, they are materialists, and advocate consumerism. They live a careless life, falling in vanity in spirit. In general, they have a cynical view of the world, sexual promiscuity, and drugs. They were brought down by realism in the 1980s.
Breaking Night is an epitome of the 1980s in the U.S.A The thesis introduces the novel to give a general idea of the writer and the whole story. Through textual analysis of the book, the thesis reveals the American cultural values and social phenomena in the novel. Then it investigates the cultural values of the U.S.A., such as American dream, the inpidualism and heroism. Through the approach of example analysis, the thesis will show the readers what the society of the U.S.A. was in 1980s, and give a conclusion of its cultural values.
Key Words: Breaking Night, American mainstream culture, values

摘要
利兹•默里被视为美国奇迹女孩，她克服种种困难，最终以优异成绩进入哈佛。她的自传小说《风雨哈佛路：一个最贫穷也最勇敢的哈佛女孩》一跃成为年度超级畅销书，她的故事因此被千万人知晓。

利兹•默里在她的自传小说中，叙述了自己如何从充满嬉皮士的环境中蜕变出来的故事。嬉皮士们对婚姻和家庭毫不重视，他们沉迷于消费主义和物质主义，精神世界空虚，对于生活毫不关心。总的来说，他们玩世不恭，性混乱，生活在毒品中。

《风雨哈佛路》这一小说是20世纪80年代美国的缩影。本论文介绍了小说的内容及作者，并以小说为材料，重点分析了这部小说所反映的美国梦、个人主义和英雄主义等美国文化价值观及其社会现象。论文将探索研究美国文化价值观，如美国梦，个人主义和英雄主义。通过举例分析的方法，论文将告知读者20世纪80年代以后的社会风貌，并给出有关美国文化价值观的结论。
关键词：《风雨哈佛路：一个最贫穷也最勇敢的哈佛女孩》，美国主流文化，价值观 从《风雨哈佛路》解读美国文化价值观 :http://www.751com.cn/yingyu/lunwen_11738.html