徐行是什么意思语解释例句-海词汉语-jedward


2023年4月19日发(作者：读书伴我成长演讲稿)龙源期刊网
《林中之死》的原型解读

作者：杨绍芳

来源：《经济研究导刊》2010年第19期

摘要:舍伍德安德森的名篇《林中之死》讲述了一个并不可怕但又无法避免的死亡的故事,
展现了女主人公悲怆的一生和故事讲述者对她的死亡的反应。认为原型批评能更好地阐释格兰
姆斯夫人从天真纯洁的女孩到最后被所有人遗弃的老女人形象。在她的一生中,不幸和悲剧总
是陪伴左右,因此,认为格兰姆斯夫人的形象体现了替罪羊原型——她不过是那个冷酷无情的的
父权社会中众多无辜女性牺牲品中的一个,她存在的唯一价值就是被男人利用,成为父权社会的
替罪羊。
关键词:《林中之死》;原型批评;格兰姆斯夫人;替罪羊
中图分类号:I3/7文献标志码:A文章编号:1673-291X(2010)19-0217-03

1. Introduction
Sherwood Anderson is a special literary figure in American literature. Many literary giants such
as Hemingway, Faulkner and Steinbeck all owed a lot to him. In an interview for the Paris Review
(Spring 1956), Faulkner stated that Sherwood Anderson was “the father of my generation of American
writers and the tradition of American writing which our successors will carry on.” As a pioneer of
modernism, Anderson is especially concerned with humanity and the secret of life or the thing
“beneath the surface of lives”. (See the dedication to Winesburg, Ohio) His works, especially short
stories, often focus on characters we would hardly notice in real life. Frequently, Anderson reveals the
hidden value of such insignificant people, their true nature, worth and their futile struggle to maintain
their inner worth. A good example is Mrs. Jake Grimes of “Death in the Woods” which marks the
highest peak of Anderson’s literary creation.
The story is presented as a first-person narrative by an unreliable narrator, who tells the story of
an old woman, Mrs. Grimes. She lives on the edge of society and survives by selling eggs to make a
living for her small family and the animals in her care. Mrs. Grimes’ personal history, according to the
narrator, is that she was abandoned and grew up as an indentured servant. Later, it is Jake Grimes,
who helps her escape from her malicious German masters. After marrying Jake, she has a son and a
daughter, but the latter dies in childhood. The narrator tells us both father and son severely abuse and
maltreat Mrs. Grimes, both verbally and physically. She does not know life could be any different as
this is all she ever experienced. Her main concern in life is taking care of and feeding the animals and
people in her care. On the last day of her life, on the way home from town, Mrs. Grimes reaches a
clearing where she sits down to rest. While sitting down, she dies.

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Though relatively a simple story, Death in the Woods brings about great artistic effect and
especially the image of Mrs. Grimes lingers on readers’ mind for quite a long time. Mrs. Grimes
evolves from an innocent and scared girl through the self-reliant and alienated middle-aged
housekeeper to the paralytic and deserted old woman. Yet misfortune and tragedy always accompany
her throughout her whole life. Mrs. Grimes’ short life shares many similarities with the image of
“scapegoat”. Therefore, the author of this paper intends to analyze the character of Mrs. Grimes from
the archetypal perspective, with the aim to try to identify Mrs. Grimes’ manifestation as Scape除夕的诗句古诗 goat
Archetype——she surely is a victim of the frozen machine society who has been denied any love or
tenderness and exists only to be used by men.

2. Archetypal Criticism
Archetypal criticism is one of the most important western literary critical schools in the 20th
century created by Northrop Frye. The word “archetype”, originates from Greek, arche meaning
“root” and “origin” while type means “pattern” or “model”. Archetype refers to a symbol, theme,
setting, or character-type that recurs in different times and places in myth, literature, folklore, dreams,
and rituals so frequently or prominently as to suggest that it embodies some essential element of
“universal” human experience. Focusing on images, symbols, metaphors, characters, plots, events and
themes which continually recur in works of literature, archetypal criticism is commonly used to
describe an original pattern or model from which all other things of the same kind are made. Its
critical strategy is to back up from the text, to find out the underlying correspondences or analogues in
works so as to apprehend the recurrences of certain archetypes.
As a forerunner of archetypal criticism, James Frazer devoted all his life to the research on myth.
In his masterpiece The Golden Bough he studies the witchcraft and rituals of many primitive tribes,
trying to “show a general development of modes of thought from the magical to the religious and,
finally, to the scientific, or the traces of human consciousness from the primitive to the civilized”. His
book The Golden Bough is now treated as the earliest document of archetypal criticism.
The contribution of Carl Gustav Jung to the development of the theory of archetypes from the
psychoanalysis perspective can not be ignored either. Based on his theory of Collective of
Unconscious, he expands Freud’s theories of the unconscious by classifying it into personal
unconscious and collective unconscious. According to Jung, archetypes are some images which reveal
the content of collective unconscious by way of symbol or metaphor.
Above all, Northrop Frye’s contribution leads us directly into the mythological approach to
literary analysis. Based on Jung’s psychological theory of collective unconsci痪组词 ousness and archetype
and Frazer’s study on anthropology, Frye establishes his theory of archetype in the particular field of
literary criticism. He transferred the definition of archetype from the field of psychology and
anthropology to literature. Accordi昨夜星辰昨夜梦 ng to Frye, archetype is independent and communicable unit of
literature just like words in language. Second, archetypes take form as imagery, significance, character
or plot that repeat in literary works. Third, archetypes connect all the single works with others and
thereby help to unify and integrate our literary experience.

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3. Analysis of Mrs. Grimes’ Image
According to Mr Gan Wenping in his On Scapegoat Novels in American Literature, scapegoat
generally has the following characteristics: First, scapegoat usually refers to human, including woman,
children or even saints; second, scapegoat is innocent; third, scapegoats is usually killed because his
death will take away all the evils and bring about peace and safety to the community. Mrs. Grimes is a
common and simple woman yet whose image just coincides with the Scapegoat archetype for they
tend to elicit comparable psychological responses and to embody similar cultural connotation.

3.1 The Scapegoat Archetype
The English word “scapegoat” originally appeared at the time when British religious reformer,
William Tindale, translated Holy Bible from Hebrew into English.
The archetype of the scapegoat comes from the story of Abraham in the Holy Bible. God wants
to test Abraham. He asks Abraham to take his only son Issac as a burnt offering to an appointed place.
Abraham raises early in the morning, takes Issac his son to the place. He splits wood, builds an altar,
and places the wood in order. Just as Abraham takes the knife to slay, God, knowing that Abraham
fear him,sends the Angel to stop him. And Abraham sees a goat caught in a thicket by its horns. So he
takes the goat as a burnt offering to God instead of his son.
Another story about the scapegoat is recorded in the Leviticus. Goat is taken as sin offering to
make atonement on the Day of Atonement and God tells them how to do it. “Aaron shall lay both his
hands on the head of the live goat, confess over it all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all
their transgressions, concerning all their sins, putting them on the head of the goat, and shall send it
away into the wilderness by the hand of a suitable man. The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities
to an uninhabited land; and he shall release the goat in the wilderness.” (Holy Bible, Leviticus 16:21-
22)
British anthropologist Frazer made大江东去浪淘尽千古风流 a thorough study on the archetype of Scapegoat in his book
Golden Bough. This motif centered in the belief that, by transferring the corruptions of the tribe to a
sacred animal or person, then by killing this scapegoat, the tribe could achieve the cleansing and
atonement thought necessary for natural and spiritual rebirth.
3.2 Mrs. Grimes’ Chosen as the Scapegoat
The value a person places on himself or herself is largely determined by the value others give to
that person. Those who grow up loved and cherished learn to feel worthwhile and develop a healthy
sense of self. Such a background of love and caring can even sustain a person through periods when
he or she feels unloved and insignificant. But those who have never known love, who have never been
given any human warmth, soon come to see themselves as worthless. Such an emotionally starved
person is Mrs. Grimes in “Death in the Woods.” Mrs. Grimes is a woman who has been denied any

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vestige of love or tenderness; she exists only to be used, to put it more frankly, to be used by the
frozen society as a poor scapegoat to achieve its atonement.
From her childhood on, Mrs. Grimes has been trapped in a cycle of exploitation. As an orphan,
she became a “bound” girl, legally contracted to work as slave labor for a farmer who terrified her
with his lust, and for his wife, who frightened the girl with her jealousy. The girl’s only escape from
this prison was marriage to Jake Grimes, a shiftless farmer who beat her and expected her to work the
farm alone. However, the hopeless and helpless marriage casts her despair and doubt about life
meaning, pushing her into the deep abyss of sufferings. When the couple’s son grows up, he joins the
father in abusing the mother who really lives a simple life, because she just does one thing all through
her life——“feeding”. They demand that she feed them, and somehow she must also sustain the
animals of the farm: How was she going to get everything fed?——that was her business. The dogs
had to be fed. There wasn’t enough hay in the barn for the horses and the cow. If she didn’t feed the
chickens how could they lay eggs? Without eggs to sell how could she buy things in town, things she
needed to keep life on the farm going? Even though Mrs. Grimes earnestly not only performs the
traditional female role of housewife, but also plays an unconventional role of a breadwinner to feed
her idle husband, tough son, and loyal dogs, she gains nothing but a tragic and doomed end. Her life is
nothing but an endless battle to meet the demands of the animals——as well as men——who devour
her strength and yo苏武传ppt课件 uth, turning her into an “old woman when she isn’t even forty yet.”

Trapped by life, Mrs. Grimes never thinks of fighting back. Because she had always been
brutalized by the world, she learns to expect nothing from it. Life, to her, is merely survival. In her
world, she naturally believes that man is powerful, is dominant, and she is unable to do anything
against them. As the narrator says, “Whatever happened she never said anything. That was her way of
getting along.” Even her death is not a conscious suicide; it is just surrender to circumstances that
dominate her, as events have always dominated her. She dies, dreamily fading into the coldness,
“softly and quietly.” Even her dreams could have provided no escape, for she had no happy past to
dream of because “not many pleasant things had happened to her.” In dying, as in living, Mrs. Grimes
knows of no way but to give in, because she has never seen herself as someone worth fighting to save.
Deprived of the love that teaches one she is valuable, Mrs. Grimes places little even no value on her
life. As the narrator of the story says, Mrs. Grimes was “one of the nameless ones,” the insignificant
ones, but, after her death, others began to notice her, and to see her value. Lying frozen in the snow,
the body of Mrs. Grimes seems somehow transformed into “the body of some charming young girl.”
The townsmen who cover her body regard it with a kind of respect and awe, and they want to avenge
her mistreatment at the hands of her husband and son. The sight of the dead woman creates a “strange
mystical feeling” in the minds of the adolescent narrator and his brother. Too late, someone sees the
beautiful person inside of the mistreated, broken woman.
Mrs. Grimes died just as she lived, for “even after death she continued feeding animal life,” her
sack of scraps is ripped open by her dogs. Treated not as a person but as a thing, Mrs. Grimes died
without ever seeing her own value. Her tragedy is not so much the account of her death as it is the
story of her life, the story of being chosen by the frozen society as a scapegoat. Just as Anderson wrote
to the editors of The Oxford Anthology of American Literature in 1937: “It seems to me that theme of

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the story is the persistent animal hunger of men. There are these women who spend their whole lives,
rather dumbly, feeding this hunger.” Therefore, like an innocent scapegoat, Mrs. Grimes is totally
swallowed by that transitional period from the Pastoral Age to the cold-blooded Machine Age and
above all, by that animal hunger of men.
4. Conclusion
There are many ways to interpret this story. The present paper interprets the image of the
protagonist——Mrs. Grimes from the perspective of archetypal criticism to try to get new
understanding of Anderson’s art. Trapped by life, Mrs. Grimes never thinks of fighting back. Because
she had always been brutalized by the world, she learns to expect nothing from it. To her, life is
merely a survival. In her world, she naturally believes that man is powerful, dominant, and she is
unable to do anything against them. Such is the very image of Mrs. Grimes——from an innocent and
scared girl through the self-reliant and alienated middle-aged housekeeper to the paralytic and
deserted old woman. Her short life fits for the uttering perfectly——“Frailty, thy name is woman”.

With the above analysis, the paper concludes that Mrs. Grimes manifests herself as the Scapegoat
Archetype——she surely is an innocent victim of the frozen Machine Age for she has been denied
any love or tenderness and exists only to be used. Mrs. Grimes can never escape her doom——to be
the chosen as scapegoat and make sacrifice for the cold world.
Sherwood Anderson might not be a great writer, but his works have their own distinctions and
attractions. Along with the vivid character——Mrs. Grimes in “Death in the Woods”, he deserves to
be a unique flower in world literature.

参考文献:
[1]Chen, Dunquan. Lu Hsun and Sherwood Anderson: Background, Theme, and Style[J]. Journal
of Foreign Languages, 1989,(1).
[2]Sherwood Anderson. Death in the Woods.
[3]邓安琪. 死亡中孕育的生命[D].武汉:华中师范大学,2006.
[4]封一函.安德森《林中之死》的元小说特征:第23卷[J].解放军外国语学院学报,2000,(5)
[5]甘文.试长安古意 小椴 论美国文学中的“替罪羊”小说[J].辽宁师范大学学报:社会科学学版,2002,(6).
[6]何劲虹.孤独的社会 死亡的世界[J].重庆师范大学学报,2003,(4):106-107.

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[7]侯艳萍.论舍伍德安德森短篇小说中的人物创造[D].上海:上海外国语大学,2006.
[8]刘玉恩.舍伍德安德森笔下的孤独人生[D].上海:上海外国语大学,2005.

An Archetypal Reading of Death in the Woods

YANG Shao-fang
(Foreign Languages College Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin 300387,China)
Abstract:Sherwood Anderson’s Death in the Woods has been usually read as a story presenting
death as inevitable though not terrible, concerning the pathos of a woman’s life and the narrator’s
response to her death. In this paper, the author supposes archetypal criticism would be a better angle to
interpret the image of Mrs. Grimes whose personal history evolves from an innocent and scared girl to
the paralytic and deserted old w清明节的故事100字 oman. Yet misfortune and tragedy always accompany her throughout
her wh苦心孤诣造句 ole life. Therefore, the paper concludes Mrs. Grimes manifests herself as the Scapegoat
Archetype——she surely is an innocent victim of the cold and merciless patriarchal society in which
she has suffered all her life from a lack of any human warmth. She exists only to be used by men as
the scapegoat of the patriarchal society.
Key words:Death in the Woods; archetypal criticism; Mrs. Grimes; scapegoat



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