《继承者》进步还是退步——威廉.戈尔丁对社会达尔文主义的批判英语语言文学专业论文.docxVIP

A Abstract PAGE PAGE iv iii iii William Golding is one of the most prominent British writers in the twentieth century. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1983. His masterpiece The Inheritors is about the confrontation and conflict between the primitive People (the Neanderthals) and the New People (Homo sapiens). The novel is concerned with human evolution and progress, revealing that the technological and cultural advances are achieved at the cost of bloodshed and humanity. The thesis makes an in-depth analysis of The Inheritors in the opposite position of social Darwinism, aiming at criticizing the “progressive” evolutionary view which espouses the doctrine of “survival of the fittest,” the principle of inequality and the extermination of other races. The thesis consists of three chapters. Chapter One examines the doctrine of “survival of the fittest” proposed by social Darwinism. Intelligence and technological inventions enable the New People to adapt themselves to the natural environment and to become the “fittest.” Such “fittest” group is not the “best” when they bring destruction to nature, behave selfishly and ruthlessly, and indulge in drunkenness and lust. Chapter Two explores social Darwinists’ assumption that human progress depends on the inequality between human and nature, between different races. Such an assumption is a justification for the New People’s exploitation of nature and their discrimination of the primitive People. Chapter Three scrutinizes social Darwinists’ attitude towards wars. They claim that the extermination of the “inferior” race benefits human progress. This chapter endorses the humanity of the primitive People: their harmonious relationship with nature, their compassion for clansmen and their hospitality towards the New People, revealing the destructive effect of the elimination brought by the New People. The conclusion is that social Darwinism seeks the evolutionary theories of biological science to defend the exploitation