The Disintegration of the American Family in Joyce Carol Oates’s Fiction

Joyce Carol Oates is undoubtedly one of the contemporary writers in the American literature who writes about the evils of the American society. But what adds originality to her approach is the absence of interpretations or value judgment about what she is reporting. She places herself in the position of an observer who merely states the facts that she sees. Through the employment of contemporary historical events and actual physical places, Oates is both a novelist and a social critic. She chooses this way, though not clearly stated, to show Americans that they are the characters of her novels and pointing out the direction in which their lives are headed. Her early novels, With Shuddering Fall (1964), A Garden of Earthly Delights (1967), Expensive People (1968), them (1969), Wonderland (1971), and Do with Me What You Will (1973) deal with people in various environments, and despite the difference in plot these novels are all united by a common spirit of materialism permeating the American family as a whole. The purpose of this study is to consider the social criticism in the novels by examining in detail the process of disintegration the American family is going through, as it appears in various settings: the rural, the urban and the suburban. DOI: 10.5901/ajis.2012.v2n4p155