A Study of the Changing Main Characters in American Novels after World WarII and a New Trend in American Literature

在本研究中，我打算展示二战后美国小说中的主要人物是如何变化的，以确定21世纪美国文学的新趋势。20世纪50年代和60年代的主角通常被视为反英雄。我通过分析j·d·塞林格、索尔·贝娄和菲利普·罗斯的主要人物，以r·w·b·刘易斯给出的美国英雄的三个标准来澄清每个十年的反英雄的性质：1)优于普通人；2)不受社会和种族的束缚；3)在生活中有坚定的原则。在越南战争、反主流文化和20世纪70年代的石油危机中，主角的英雄气质急剧下降。当美国社会在20世纪80年代变得极端保守时，美国文学涉及更多的日常材料和场景。因此，它的主要人物也变得平凡。我通过讨论伯纳德·马拉默德的小说，以及索尔·贝娄早期和后期人物对婚姻态度的变化来研究这种变化。我还研究了约瑟夫·海勒和库尔特·冯内古特在20世纪60年代创作的一种新型战争小说，并比较了j·d·塞林格以第二次世界大战为基础的战争小说和蒂姆·奥布莱恩以越南战争为基础的战争小说，以揭示社会态度的变化是如何影响它们的主角的。最后，在观察80年代以后的主要人物时，我特别注意到了Walter Abish，因为他对待现实的激进的人文主义态度。它与他的后现代风格相结合，可能预示着美国文学的一种新趋势。

In this study, I intend to show how main characters in American hovels have changed after World War II in order to define a new trend of American literature in the 21st century.The main characters in the 1950s and 1960s are often regarded as anti-heroes. I clarified the nature of the anti-heroes of each decade by analyzing the main characters of J. D. Salinger, Saul Bellow, and Philip Roth with the three criteria of an American hero given by R. W. B. Lewis : 1) to be superior to ordinary people, 2) to be free from both social and racial ties, and 3) to have strong principles in leading their lives.The heroic nature of main characters keeps declining dramatically through the Vietnam War, the counter culture, and the oil crises in the 1970s. And when American society becomes extremely conservative in the 1980s, American literature deals with more everyday materials and scenes. Accordingly its main characters become ordinary, too. I examined this change by discussing Bernard Malamud's novels, as well as the change in the attitudes towards marriage expressed by Saul Bellow's early and later characters. I also examined a new type of war novels in the 1960s written by Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut, and compared J. D. Salinger's war stories based on World War II and Tim O'Brien's war novel based on the Vietnam War, in order to disclose how the changing social attitudes affected their main characters.In the end, observing the main characters after the 1980s, I paid special attention to Walter Abish because of his radical humanistic attitude towards dealing with reality. Together with the post-modern style of his writing, it could indicate a new trend in American literature.