@misc{Ren, author = {Ren, Huan}, title = {An Analysis of Alienation in >The New York Trilogy< [《纽约三部曲》中的异化主题分析], Master thesis, English Language and Literature, Guangxi Normal University, Guilin, Guangxi China 2012 [Application of Fromm's theories to art].}, abstract = {Paul Auster (b. 1947) is one of the most innovative American contemporary writers. His acute insight into the crisis of the American postmodern society and meditation of its quests endow him rare philosophical depth, for which he is praised as one of the most intellectually stimulating fiction writers in America. The thesis takes The New York Trilogy (City of Glass, Ghosts and The Locked Room) as the study object, discussing how the work, with a series of watchmen as symbols, profoundly depicts the New York City and its people's alienated life, solitary, lost and hopeless, after the 1950s. Adopting American contemporary psychoanalyst and philosopher Erich Fromm's related alienation theory, the thesis analyzes the estrangement in the trilogy between man and society and between man and man. There are four chapters.- Chapter 1 introduces Paul Auster and his novel The New York Trilogy, followed by literary review of this trilogy and theoretical basis and structure of this thesis.- Chapter Two explores three manifestations of social space, production and consumption to illustrate social alienation all-pervasive. Alienation in social space at first takes outside and inside spaces such as city, room, door and widow, to penetrate modern people's isolation and solitude, then using Fromm's theory of one of people's basic needs relatedness to observe people's sadist and masochist alienation; next part of alienation involves production which is human being's distorted productivity, the life force Fromm calls, such as the abuse of government function, degradation and disability of people's detection and writer's creation; the third are two kinds of alienated consumption: one destructive compensatory consumption and the other passive consumption. In City of Glass Quinn intents to confirm his identity and existence by indulging himself into compensational consumptive writing, but the failure leaves him only sense of hollow and loss. The passive consumption embodies in people's leisure activity such as Quinn's walking without any active pleasure. While walking Quinn's body is mechanical, and what he feels is desperately helpless and lost; besides, in The Locked Room the narrator sinks with his wife into a luxurious and corrupt life, which leads them into loss and desperation.- Chapter 3 examines relations of authority in family in City of Glass, powerless and normless work in Ghosts, and an idol-like and distorted friendship in The Locked Room. The first part displays family alienation in farther and son relationship where little Peter is abused by powerful father Stillman and after grown up, he was also >tenderly protected< by his powerful wife. The second part is the alienation in work where both Quinn and Black's self-discipline can do nothing in their detection and when they cannot find out a reliable fact they are trapped in frustration and anxiety. The third part deals with the alienation in friendship between the narrator and Fanshawe. Thus in New York City, the epitome of capitalist society, relationship between man and man becomes utilization, a relation of objects, and there is little love but alienation and indifference.- Chapter 4 is the conclusion. Auster makes a deep and all-round exposure of today's social alienation, which helps people rethink their social life and development and also contributes to their further quests.}, language = {zh} }