Sister Carrie 主人公形象分析

1）Sister Carrie (1900), is a work of pivotal importance in American literature despite its inauspicious launching. It became a beacon to subsequent American writers whose allegiance was to the realistic treatment of any and all subject matter. Sister Carrie tells the story of a rudderless but pretty small-town girl who comes to the big city filled with vague ambitions. She is used by men and uses them in turn to become a successful Broadway actress while George Hurstwood, the married man who has run away with her, loses his grip on life and descends into beggary and suicide. Sister Carrie was the first masterpiece of the American naturalistic movement in its grittily factual presentation of the vagaries of urban life and in its ingenuous heroine, who goes unpunished for her transgressions against conventional sexual morality. The book's strengths include a brooding but compassionate view of humanity, a memorable cast of characters, and a compelling narrative line. The emotional disintegration of Hurstwood is a much-praised triumph of psychological analysis.
2）in this poem the poet expressed a keen awareness of the loveliness and transience of nature.he not only meditated on mortality but also celebrated nature.it implies that life and death are inevitable law of nature,
"the wild honey suckle"is philipfreneau's most widely read natureal lyric with the theme of transience.the central image is a nativewild flower,which makes a drastic difference from elite flower images typical of tradition english poems.
the poem showed strong feelings for the natural beauty,which was the characteristic of romantic poets.
The poem was written in regular 6-line tetrameter stanzas,rhyming:ababcc .the structure of the poem is regular,so it has the neoclassic quality of proportion and balance.
alliteration ,assonance,masculine rhyme used in the poem also produce musical or melodious and harmonious,which matches the beautyof the flower,the beauty of poem is partly ambodied in the effects created through changes in the rhythm.
the poem contains iambics trochaics and spondee.
the arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables suggests the transience of the life of the flower and the poet's emotional change.the poem is full of sensuous images such as fair flower visual image,comely grow kinasthetic image and honeyed blossoms olfactory image.all the images make us feel pity for the beautiful flower which has only a short life.
obviously the poet is sentimental,deistic optimist.
the line"the sapace is but an hour"contains a hyperbole stressing and transience of life.
the tone of the poem is both sentimental and optimistic.