TY - GEN A1 - Guo, Xiadi T1 - Modern Man’s Living Plight and Its Solutions: An Exploration of Alienation in >The Human Stain<, Master thesis, World Literature, Institution: Xi'an International Studies University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, China 2021 [application of Fromm's theories to art]. N2 - As an eminent Jewish American writer, Philip Roth is well-known as an incisive observer of America’s social scene. His works mainly deal with several themes, including Jewish identity, spiritual crises of humankind, the American Dream, and conflicts between human nature and the ethic or morality of modern society. His masterpiece, the winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award in 2001, >The Human Stain< probes into the plight of self in American society. Up to now, different scholars at home and abroad have analyzed it from a variety of perspectives, like ethnic identity, racial passing, trauma, archetype, and narrative method. Unlike the previous studies, this thesis analyzes it from the perspective of Erich Fromm’s alienation theory. As a ubiquitous social phenomenon in modern society, alienation, a mode of subjective experience, indicates that man regards himself as an alienated one or receives the outside world passively. In this novel, these major characters suffer from alienation respectively, including self-alienation, the estranged relationships with one another as well as alienation in the whole society, which results from some irrational thought prevailing in America, like deep-seated racial and gender disparity, political correctness, the climate of persecution and cruel Vietnam War. Based on textual analysis and reference learning, this thesis concludes that though people go through alienation seriously, they can get rid of it through the salvation of love, the pursuit of identity, and the healing power of nature. Sincerely, this thesis can contribute to an interpretation of >The Human Stain< from a new perspective alienation, and raise attention to modern man’s living predicaments and its salvation or solutions. [www.cnki.net, 1/2023] Y1 - 2021 ER -