论《荒野的呼唤》中的荒野意蕴-英语语言文学专业论文.docxVIP

Engli English Abstract II II Abstract Jack London (1876-1916) is one of the greatest novelists in America at the turn of last century. Many of his works have been classified as American literature classics. The wild has been a unique and indispensable background in most of his novels, and Jack London is regarded as a wilderness writer because of his wonderful description of the wild. The Call of the Wild (1903), as a typical wilderness work, is recognized as Jack London’s best. However, the critics pay too much attention to the analysis of this novel’s characters, narrative structures, language features, and little to the setting of the wild and the wild’s thematic significance. This thesis from the perspective of cultural criticism aims at the interpretation of the implication of the wild in this novel, considering that it is not just an animal story about a dog, but an allegorical story about the eternal theme of life. According to his Klondike experiences, Jack London creates this novel in the beginning of 20th century when America is in the transformation period with rapid development of economy and sharp intensification of social contradictions. Through the story of a dog, he symbolically presents his concern about every social stratum Americans’ living circumstances at that period and his insight on life’s vitality. With three different kinds of characters as the penetrating point, this thesis explores respectively three characters’ living circumstances and fates in the wild, analyzes the implication of the wild and finds out the ideological fantasy, power relation and the pursuit of the positive freedom behind the text by combining historical and cultural backgrounds of American society at the turn of last century. This thesis is mainly divided into three chapters. Firstly, this thesis interprets the wild for goldseekers who are the symbol of immigrants as an illusory land. They are tempted by ideological fantasy namely American Dream constructed