Viewing twentieth century abusers and their victims in literature with twenty-first century eyes: A search for relevancy.

摘要

Current high school and college students may be left questioning why certain works of literature are a mainstay of English courses despite being decades old. Unable to see the connections to their own lives, readers may dismiss them as irrelevant. The thesis will attempt to confirm the timeless appeal of five early twentieth-century novels by focusing on one aspect of familial relationships, that of the aggressor and victim. The novels to be examined are Anna Yezierska's Bread Givers, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying, and John Steinbeck's East of Eden. Each of these novels has an aggressive protagonist who preys on one or more members of their immediate family. These novels will be looked at in light of current self-help books that deal with abusive relationships, several studies of the effect of abuse on children, and current domestic abuse statistics. By examining their aggressor/victim relationships using modern terminology, and by showing that the motivation behind the choices made by the characters are the same choices a twenty-first century reader would plausibly make, this thesis will establish one aspect of the novels in which modern readers can still find relevancy.;Keywords: Liberal Studies, Dr. Daniel Shank Cruz, popular psychology.