From Separation to Harmony: The Self and the Other in Joyce Carol Oates's Heat

• Main Authors: Lee, Kenneth, 李顗恩
• Other Authors: Leung, Yanwing
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 1998
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/82487536263247240968

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 外國語文學系 === 86 === Many critics have observed the Self and the Other in Joyce Carol Oates's fiction. The scope of the Self and the Other, however, is limited: the Self and the Other have been observed only in the context of Oates's fictional characters. This thesis adopts a more liberal application of the Self and the Other than they have been traditionally considered. In Oates's short story collection "Heat," the Self and the Other can be applied in three different variations in the collection's three sections. In the first section, the characters of affluence and status struggle with the conflict between what Oates one's "ahistorical" and the "historical" role; in this case, the former is the Self, and the latter, the Other. In the second section, with the emergence of the first-person narrator, the Self-and-the Other split exists in the narrator, who, interestingly enough, is seldom the protagonist in this set of stories but is rather a removed, distant observer. The Self then is the "I" of the story-teller at the time of the story telling, and the Other is the same person within the story's events. In the final section, Oates's writerly self is considered. Many critics have placed Oates within the naturalist/realist framework. Yet in this section, Oates is anything but her usual "self," instead, she ventures into technical experimentation, or "the other" modes of writing. Grounded within these stories are Oates's own theories about the relationship between the Self and the Other, as well as her view of the role of the artist. Taken together, the issue of the Self and the Other is not one of an antithesis, but of reconciliation. From Oates's art as well as her own literary theory, we can see that the Self and the Other are interdependent and should be integrated into a harmony, or "family," to borrow the title of the volume's last story. Oates's ultimate aim is not separation but unity.