浅析《愤怒的葡萄》中汤姆的转变-毕业论文.doc

本科生毕业论文（设计）册

学院 汇华学院
专业 英语专业
班级 2007级9班
学生 赵兴凯
指导教师 南方

河北师范大学本科毕业论文（设计）任务书
编 号： 2011230401339
论文（设计）题目： 浅析《愤怒的葡萄》中汤姆的转变

学 院： 汇华学院 专业： 英语 班级： 2007级9班

学生姓名： 赵兴凯 学号： 2007512264 指导教师： 南方 职称： 副教授

1、 论文（设计）研究目标及主要任务
研究目标：通过对目标人物转变的分析，加深对作品的理解，通过对人物转变原因的分析，体会作者的人物塑造技巧
主要任务：研究目标人物的转变及其转变的原意

2、 论文（设计）的主要内容
汤姆的转变及其转变的原因，转变主要涉及汤姆由一个个人主义者变为一个集体主义者，由一个无信仰的囚徒变为一个坚持信仰的信徒。

3、 论文（设计）的基础条件及研究路线
基础条件：对作品的整体阅读，对人物命运的具体研究，对背景知识的理解和把握
研究路线：以人物命运的转变为主线，着力表现时代大背景下的人物命运，

4、 主要参考文献
1. 斯坦贝克:(愤怒的葡萄》，胡仲持译，上海译文出版社，2003年版。
2. 常耀信.美国文学简史.天津:南开大学出版社，2003
3. Benson Jackson. The True Adventures of John Steinbeck. New York:Viking,1984.
4. John Steinbeck. The Grapes of Wrath(New York: Viking,1996),p428

5、 计划进度

阶段
起止日期
1
确定论文题目和主题
3月16日—3月23日
2
确定论文提纲交导师审阅
3月24日—3月30日
3
完成初稿，交导师审阅批改
3月31日—4月20日
4
审阅，修改，交终稿
4月21日—5月8日
5
论文答辩
5月下旬

指 导 教师： 年 月 日

教研室主任： 年 月 日

注：一式三份，学院（系）、指导教师、学生各一份

河北师范大学本科生毕业论文（设计）开题报告书

汇华 学院 英语 专业 2011 届
学生
姓名

赵兴凯
论文（设计）题目
浅析《愤怒的葡萄》中汤姆的转变

指导
教师
南方
专业
职称
副教授
所属教研室
翻译教
研室
研究方向
英美文学
课题论证：通过对作品中人物的分析，得出在时代的大背景下，人物的命运是时代环境和文化环境交织的产物。
方案设计：第一章主要介绍汤姆由一个个人主义者变为一个集体主义者，第二章主要介绍汤姆由一个囚犯变为一个坚持基督信仰的信徒，第三章主要介绍造成这种转变的原因。
进度计划：3月16日—3月23日 确定论文题目和主题
3月24日—3月30日 确定论文提纲交导师审阅
3月31日—4月20日 完成初稿，交导师审阅批改
4月21日—5月8日 审阅，修改，交终稿
5月下旬 论文答辩
指导教师意见：

指导教师签名： 年 月 日
教研室意见：

教研室主任签名： 年 月 日

河北师范大学本科生毕业论文（设计）文献综述

Steinbeck remains one of the American’s most significant writers whose popularity spans the world, whose range is impressive. Among Steinbeck’s literary works, The Grapes of Wrath endures as a masterpiece of American literature, which played a major role in his winning the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize for Literature. The Grapes of Wrath exerted a tremendous impact on American society when it was published in 1939, and its significance went far beyond the realm of literature. David Watt, a literary critic, once commented, “No American novel published in this century has aroused such a storm as The Grapes of Wrath did One has to go back to Uncle Tom’s Cabin to witness its equal.” As a fiction documenting the Dust Bowl migration during the Great Depression, The Grapes of Wrath enjoys a great popularity among American readers, “appealing equally to politicians, intellectuals, literary critics and the general public” During its first yea of publication, more than 400,000 copies of the novel were sold. In 1982, the New York Times reported that it was the second best-selling novel ever in America, with 14,600,000 copies printed.
Although The Grapes of Wrath is quite popular with the readers, literary critics have very controversial views about this work. Right after its publication, it has provoked much hot debates and arguments among critics. As David Minter, an expert of American literature, once pointed out, “The Grapes of Wrath was one of the most influential and controversial novels of the 1930s.”For this reason, the so-called“Steinbeck Question” was raised by American scholars and it still remains to be solved. Generally speaking, the criticism on this novel has undergone three periods of development.
The first period started from 1939 and lasted to the mid 1950s. In this period, critics tended to focus their attention on the novel’s relationship with its historical and political background. Some critics regarded it as a protest novel. For example, Malcolm Cowley, a famous critic in the 1930s, claimed that “The Grapes of Wrath belongs very highly in the category of the great angry books like Uncle Tom’s Cabin that had aroused the people to fight against the intolerable wrongs.” And some scholars argued that Steinbeck expresses the traditional American philosophical thought in his novel. Frederic Carpenter published a critical essay in 1941 entitled The Philosophical Joads. In this essay he contended, “For the first time in history, The Grapes of Wrath brings together and makes real three great skeins of American thought. It combines Ralph Waldo Emerson’s transcendental over-soul, Whitman’ mass democracy and William James’ Pragmatism.”Many other critics categorized Steinbeck as a left writer and labeled The Grapes of Wrath as a “proletarian novel”. They claimed that “the novel depicts the life of the working classes and deals with the industrial problem from the point of view of labor.” Some critics, such as Arthur Spearman, even attacked the novel as “political propaganda which reflects Steinbeck’s intention to subvert American cultural tradition”, and they asserted that “the novel’s major theme is from individualism to collectivism.”
From the mid 1950s to the mid 1970s the studies on The Grape of Wrath entered another phase. In this period, under the influence of a critical theory called the New Criticism,scholars tried to avoid evaluating the novel from its social and historical background. Instead, they tended to regard it as a pure work of art. Therefore, these scholars mainly focused their research on the novel’s structure, language, characters, plot, symbols, imagery and thoughts, etc. Because of their different aesthetic tastes, critics often made contradicting conclusions. After a close textual analysis, many of them contended that “The Grapes of Wrath is a great novel with superb characterization and moving plot”, while some argued that “its structure is incoherent and its language is folksy”. Several scholars discovered that when writing The Grapes of Wrath Steinbeck drew much inspiration from the holy Bible. They claimed, “Biblical themes, symbols, structures and language are pervasive in this novel. The Joad family’s migration from Oklahoma to California corresponds to the story of Israelites’ exodus from Egypt to Canaan in the Old Testament.” Tedlock and Wicker, two critics, contended that “the novel reflects Steinbeck’s non-teleological thinking which is often linked with his biological view of man”. They pointed out “Steinbeck’s characters view their life as what it is, not with the questions of why or what should be.”
After the mid 1970s came a new trend of Steinbeck studies. Critics began to use some modern literary theories to analyze the novel, such as Feminism, Regionalism, Ecological Criticism and New Historicism. By applying different theories to their research, critics have made various conclusions. In the 1970s Mimi Reisel Gladstein studied The Grapes of Wrath from Feministic approach. She illustrated that Steinbeck portrayed Ma Joad and Rose of Sharon as two indestructible women character in the novel. During the 1980s Louis Owens argued that “there is a close relationship between Steinbeck’s literary creation and his home state California.” He pointed out, “In The Grapes of Wrath Steinbeck rejects the myth of American West and exposes the California dream is not only illusory but also dangerous. Steinbeck’s solution to this problem is a new ideal of commitment—the commitment to man and to place.” Richard Hart analyzed Steinbeck’s novel from ecological perspective. In 1997 he published an essay entitled Steinbeck on Man and Nature: A Philosophical Reflection, in which he claimed Steinbeck was a writer who thought as an ecologist. Hart pointed out that in this novel Steinbeck aimed to arouse American people’s awareness to“preserve the ecological and natural integrity.” In the year 2000, Fang Jie, a Chinese scholar, analyzed Steinbeck’s three novels from a perspective of the New Historicism. He contended, “The Grapes of Wrath is a representation of the histor and power during the 1930s”, and “the narrative of this novel promotes the possibility for subversion of the existing power, and at the same time it contains that subversion.”
From the above review, it can be found that critics still have different views on The Grapes of Wrath, and these controversies leave room for our further research and exploration. Christopher Busch, a famous Steinbeck scholar, once pointed out in John Steinbeck: Dissertation Abstracts and Research Opportunities that “the connections between Steinbeck’s works and the history of the 1930s or of the frontier period…invite further study.”The Grapes of Wrath has indeed exerted a huge impact on American society in the late 1930s and at the same time enjoyed popularity among readers.
The thesis, which is about the transition of Ton, was divided into three sections: chapter one, From an individualist to a collectivist, chapter two, From a worldly prisoner to a disciple, chapter three, The causes for the transition.

本科生毕业论文（设计）册

学院 汇华学院
专业 英语专业
班级 2007级9班
学生 赵兴凯
指导教师 南方

本科生毕业论文设计

题目 浅析《愤怒的葡萄》中汤姆的转变

作者姓名 赵兴凯
指导教师 南方
所在学院 汇华学院
专业（系） 英语专业
班级（届） 2011届9班

完成日期 2011 年 5 月 8 日

The Analysis of Tom’s Transition in
The Grapes of Wrath

By
Zhao Xingkai

Prof. Nan Fang ,Tutor

A Thesis
Submitted to the Foreign Languages
Institute in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts at
Hebei Normal University

May 8th, 2011

Contents

Introduction…………………………………………… (1)
A. The life experience of Steinbeck……………… (2)
B. The background of the story ………………… (3)
Chapter One From an individualist to a collectivist …(3)
A. To make life by himself ……………………… (4)
B. To achieve through unity ………………… (7)
Chapter 2 From a worldly prisoner to a disciple of Christianity ………………………………………… (7)
A. A prisoner with no belief ……………… (8)
B. A disciple baptized by Jim Casy and re-baptized by himself ……………………………………………… (11)
Chapter 3 The causes for the transition………………（11）
A.The biblical influence …………………… (13)
B. The naturalism and social surroundings……… (14)
Conclusion ………………………………………… (15)
Bibliography ……………………………………… (16)
Notes ……………………………………………… (17)

摘要

约翰.斯坦贝克生于1902年加利福尼亚的山谷，并攻读于斯坦福大学（1919-1925）。一生著作超过30本，斯坦贝克早期出版了两部短篇小说《煎饼评》和《人鼠之间》。斯坦贝克的主要的贡献还包括《珍珠》《罐头工厂街》，《伊甸园以东》和《愤怒的葡萄》。斯坦贝克于1962年获得了诺贝尔文学奖，而他最为人所知的作品《愤怒的葡萄》被认为是20世纪的经典作品。这部作品描写了移民乔德一家，被驱赶离开自己的土地，由俄克拉巴马州移民到加利福尼亚州的历史史诗，深刻的讨论了流动工人的悲惨生活。许多美国人，尤其是加利福尼亚州人对这些移民一直持有歧视和偏见，对他们进行虐待和剥削，使得移民在加利福尼亚州的生活十分悲惨：在《愤怒的葡萄》中，通过把一家的故事生动地再现了移民们的经历。此文讨论了斯坦贝克对乔德的人物塑造，当作者写《愤怒的葡萄》时，美国仍旧处在经济大萧条时期。大萧条不仅是经济上的灾难，而且也造成了精神上的危机。这部小说展现了压迫者和受压迫者之间激烈地冲突，《愤怒的葡萄》是美国文学里程碑式的著作，描写了经济萧条时期人们对于公正和平等本质的探讨和人们在这一时期的恐慌。
整篇文章可分为4部分，介绍的主要是书的作者和作品的主要背景，第一章，介绍了乔德由个人主义到集体主义的转变，第二章，介绍了乔德由世俗中人向坚持自我信仰的转变，第三章，主要描述了造成这种转变的原因，是由当时的社会环境和主导思想所决定。
关键词：转变，个人主义，集体主义，信仰，自然主义
Abstract

An American novelist, story writer, playwright, and essayist, John Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California in 1902 and attended Stanford University intermittently. As an author of more than thirty books, Steinbeck achieved his first popular and critical successes for two short novels, Tortilla Flats and Of Mice and Men . His major contributions to literature also include The Pearl, Cannery Row, East of Eden, and The Grapes of Wrath. Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. He is best remembered for The Grapes of Wrath , a novel widely considered to be a twentieth century classic. The epic about the migration of the Joads , driven from its bit of land in Oklahoma to California, touched off a wide debate about the hard life of migrant laborers, and helped to put an agricultural reform into effect. "A portrait of the bitter conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one man's fierce reaction to injustice, and of a people's quiet, stoical strength, The Grapes of Wrath is a landmark of American literature, one that captures the horrors of the Great Depression as it probes into the very nature of equality and justice in America."'（1）(Benson,1984:376)
The study of John Steinbeck in this thesis centers on the figures of The Grapes of Wrath, and the whole thesis is divided into four parts: Introduction of the author , the man and his works; chapter one , From an individualist to a collectivist ; chapter two ,From a worldly prisoner to a christen , chapter three, The causes for Tom’s transition. The introduction has provided some basic information about Steinbeck and his literary creations, including his status in and contributions to American literature. The chapter one shows some ideas about the individual and collective thoughts of Tom Joad, the one show the changes take place on Tom’s body and mind, and the results of the changes brought about. The chapter two provides the basic information about the Tom’s changes from a worldly prisoner to a disciple. The chapter three shows the causes for the transition, and analysis the social surroundings and the dominant ideas in that period.

Key words: transition：individualist： collectivist ：worldliness ：disciple

Introduction

A The Life Experience of John Steinbeck
An American novelist, short story writer and journalist, John Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California in 1902 .His father was a government official ,and his mother a school teacher. He grew up at home reading British and French classics. He attended Stanford University intermittently between 1919 and 1925. Steinbeck did not graduate from the University , but instead chose to support himself through manual labor while writing. Steinbeck worked as an assistant chemist and a road-building worker and was once employed on ranches, which enabled him to be familiar with the land and the laborers there. These experiences among the working classes in California provided firsthand observation of the attitudes, manners and language of the working men, and consequently lent authenticity to his depiction of the lives of the laborers who are the central characters of his most important novels. It is clear that environment, whether the accident of his birth and growth in the Salinas Valley of California or his own selection of various laboring jobs, figures largely in the source material of Steinbeck's writings. In an age when so many Americans turned away from their native country as a source of inspiration, Steinbeck was an important exception. A commitment to his native California, especially to its rural poor, shines through his works. Judging from both the qua