美国文学中的荒野老人和父亲情结

The Old Man of the Wilderness and the Father Quest in American Literature

本文通过对美国文学中荒野老人形象的研究,试图揭示美利坚民族建构父亲形象、确立自我身份的民族文化心理。《大草原》中的纳蒂·班波、《红字》中的齐灵窝斯、《去吧,摩西》中的山姆·法泽斯和《老人与海》中的圣地亚哥是出现在不同时间不同地域的北美荒野上的老人,其中班波与齐灵窝斯互为反证,前者是民族父亲,后者是被摧毁的旧式父亲;法泽斯因为在人种上的包容而充实了荒野老人的内涵,圣地亚哥则因为疆域上的宽泛而拓展了荒野老人的外延。这些荒野老人对位于各自所处时代的历史现实,他们是美利坚民族心理中父亲情结的投射,作家通过对源自旧大陆的专制父亲的贬抑和对本土父亲的颂扬,展现了美利坚民族寻求和确立自身身份的历程。

This paper attempts to study the old man of the wilderness in American literature so as to reveal the American national cultural psychology in constructing the image of their forefather and thus establishing their own identity. Natty Bumppo in The Prairie, Roger Chillingworth in The Scarlet Letter, Sam Fathers in Go Down, Moses, and Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea are old men dwelling in different regions and times of the northern American wilderness. Bumppo and Chillingworth counterevidence each other, the former being the first-born national father and the latter the destroyed conventional father. Fathers has enriched the connotation of the old man of the wilderness due to his ethnical tolerance while Santiago has enlarged its denotation because of going beyond the American border. These old men of the wilderness echo with the historical reality of their times and are the projection of the father quest in American national psychology. By dwarfing the despotic father from the Old Continent and praising the native-born father, the novelists have shown how the American nation has sought and established their own identity.