文学评论阅读

20140603文学评论阅读1. 《麦田里的守望者》The Catcher in the Rye is a bildungsroman, a novel about a young character’s growth into maturity. Holden Caulfield, however, is an unusual character for a bildungsroman because his central goal is to resist the process of maturity itself. As his thoughts about the Museum of Natural History show, Holden fears change and complexity. He wants everything to be easily understandable and fixed, like the statues of Eskimos and Indians in the museum. He is frightened because he is guilty of the sins he criticizes in others, and because he can’t understand everything around him. But he refuses to acknowledge this fear.Instead of admitting that adulthood scares and confuses him, Holden invents a fantasy that adulthood is a world of superficiality and hypocrisy, while childhood is a world of innocence, curiosity, and honesty. Nothing reveals his image of these two worlds better than his fantasy about the catcher in the rye: he imagines childhood as a field of rye in which children run and play; adulthood, for the children of this world, is equal to death—a fatal fall over the edge of a cliff.Throughout the novel, Holden seems to be excluded from the world around him. As he says to Mr. Spencer, he feels trapped on “the other side” of life, and he continually attempts to find his way in a world in which he feels he doesn’t belong.As the novel progresses, we begin to realize that Holden’s alienation is his way of protecting himself. Just as he wears his hunting hat to advertise his uniqueness, he uses his loneliness as proof that he is better than everyone else around him and therefore above interacting with them. The truth is that interactions with other people usually confuse and overwhelm him, and his sense of superiority serves as a type of self-protection. Thus, Holden’s alienation is the source of what little stability he has in his life.As readers, we can see that Holden’s alienation is the cause of most of his pain. He never expressed his own emotions directly, nor does he attempt to discover the source of his troubles. He needs human contact and love, but his protective wall of bitterness prevents him from looking for such contact. Alienation is both the source of Holden’s strength and the source of his problems. For example, his ali enation pushes him into his date with Sally Hayes, but his need for being alone causes him to insult her and drive her away. He depends upon his alienation, but it destroys him.《麦田里的守望者》是一部成长小说——讲述年少主人公变得成熟的小说。

不过，霍尔登·考尔菲尔德对成长小说来说是个不同寻常的主人公，因为他的主要目标是抵制成熟这个过程本身。

正如他对自然历史博物馆的看法一样，霍尔登害怕变化和复杂。

他希望一切都固定、容易理解，就像博物馆里爱斯基伯人和印第安人的雕像一样。

他害怕，因为他批评别人的那些罪过他自己也会犯，他很有罪恶感，也因为他不能理解周围的一切。

但他不肯承认自己害怕。

霍尔登不承认长大成人让他感到害怕和困惑，相反他得出一个结论：成人世界肤浅虚伪，而孩童的世界天真无邪，诚实无欺。

从他关于麦田里的守望者的白日梦我们可以看出他对两个世界的看法：他想象孩童的世界就像一片麦田，孩子们在里面奔跑嬉闹；而长大成人对这个世界的孩子们来说等于死亡——像掉下悬崖一样致命。

小说从头至尾，霍尔登似乎是被周围的世界所排斥了。

如他对斯宾塞先生所说，他觉得被困在生活的“另一边”，他一直试图在一个不属于他的世界里寻找自己的路。

但是慢慢地，我们开始意识到霍尔登的孤独是他保护自己的方式。

正如他带着狩猎帽标榜自己与众不同一样，他用自己的疏离证明自己比周围那些人都更好，因此不屑于和他们互动。

其实，和其他人的互动常常让他感到困惑和不知所措，而他的优越感不过是一种自我保护而已。

因此，霍尔登的孤独是他生活中仅有一点稳定感的来源。

作为读者，我们可以将霍尔登的孤独看作是他的痛苦的主要原因。

他从来不直接地表达自己的感受，也不想找到自己麻烦的根源。

他需要和人接触，需要爱，但他的痛苦筑起了一道保护墙，阻止他寻求这样的接触。

疏离既是他的力量之源，也是他的问题的症结所在。

例如，孤独促使他去和萨利·海耶斯约会，但他对孤独的需要又导致他羞辱并气走了她。

他依靠孤独而生，但孤独也毁了他。

2. 《远大前程》The moral theme of Great Expectations is quite simple: affection, loyalty, and conscience are more important than social advancement, wealth, and class. Dickens establishes the theme and shows Pip learning this lesson, largely by exploring ideas of ambition and self-improvement. At heart, Pip is an idealist; whenever he can think of something that is better than what he already has, he immediately desires to obtain the improvement. When he sees Satis House, he longs to be a wealthy gentleman; when he thinks of his moral shortcomings, he longs to be good; when he realizes that he cannot read, he l ongs to learn how. Pip’s desire for self-improvement is the main source of the novel’s title: because he believes in the possibility of advancement in life, he has “great expectations” about his future.Ambition and self-improvement take three forms in Great Expectations—moral, social, and educational; these are reasons for Pip’s best and his worst behavior throughout the novel. First, Pip desires moral self-improvement. He is extremely hard on himself when he acts immorally and feels powerful guilt that spurs him to act better in the future. When he leaves for London, for instance, he torments himself about having behaved so wretchedly toward Joe and Biddy. Second, Pip desires social self-improvement. In love with Estella, he longs to become a member of her social class, and, encouraged by Mrs. Joe and Pumblechook, he entertains fantasies of becoming a gentleman. The working out of this fantasy forms the basic plot of the novel; it provides Dickens the opportunity to gently satirize the class system of his era. Significantly, Pip’s life as a gentleman is no more satisfying—and certainly no more moral—than his previous life as a blacksmith’s apprentice. Third, Pip desires educational improvement. This desire is deeply connected to his social ambition andlonging to marry Estella: a full education is a requirement of being a gentleman. As long as he is an ignorant country boy, he has no hope of social advancement. Pip understands this fact as a child, when he learns to read at Mr. Wopsle’s aunt’s school, and as a young man, when he takes lessons from Matthew Pocket. Ultimately, through the examples of Joe, Biddy, and Magwitch, Pip learns that social and educational improvement are irrelevant to one’s real worth and that conscience and affection are to be valued above knowledge and social standing.《远大前程》是道德主题很简单：仁爱、忠诚和良心比社会地位的提升、财富和阶层更重要。