Abstract

Carson McCullers is considered to be among the most significant American writers of the twentieth century, who examined the psychology of lonely and isolated people. The Ballad of Sad Café is one of her masterpiece of fictions.
The Ballad of Sad Café was first published in 1951. It is a book comprising a novella of the same name and other six short stories. Among those stories, The Ballad of Sad Café is a story set in a small and isolated Georgia town. The freak love among three characters named respectively Amelia Evans, Marvin Macy and Lymon Willis revealed the complexity of human beings. And their complex relationships indicated that the world is absurd. The absurd style is throughout the whole story. McCullers models three characters through a way that contrasts to the traditional aesthetics. In some degree, the novel’s creation has a great fitness with Sartre’s existentialism.
This paper elaborates the tendency of existentialism of the work by referring to related literatures and combining McCullers’ life with existentialism and points out the significance of studying the work from the existentialism perspective. Part one briefly introduces Carson McCullers’s lifetime and the creating background; part two defines the main theory of existentialism; part three focus on the description of survival plight; part four mainly discusses how characters to fight for themselves.

Key words: existentialism; absurd; free choice; The Ballad of Sad Café

摘  要

卡森•麦卡勒斯被认为是20世纪最伟大的美国作家之一，其作品主要以精神孤独，人性孤僻为写作题材。《伤心咖啡馆之歌》是麦卡勒斯的小说杰作之一。
《伤心咖啡馆之歌》一本由卡森•麦卡勒斯创作的小说集，收录与书同名的故事及其他六部短篇小说。《伤心咖啡馆之歌》是一篇与书同名的中篇小说，主要讲述了发生在南方乔治亚小镇的三位主人公之间的畸形三角恋故事，人物的性格特征揭示了人性的复杂，复杂的人物关系又显示出人们所处的世界的荒谬。麦卡勒斯以反传统美学的角度塑造了小说主人公，怪诞之风充斥全篇。作品的创作与萨特存在主义有着相当惊人的契合之处。
笔者希望通过参考相关文献，结合作者生平和存在主义相关理论来分析作品中的存在主义倾向并指出用存在主义解读作品的意义。论文第一章简要介绍作者生平及创作背景；第二章讨论存在主义理论的形成发展，介绍本文使用的理论来源；第三章聚焦于人物生存困境及其反抗态度。第四章主要论述人物如何通过“存在”和“作为”来获得自救。

关键词：存在主义； 荒诞；自由选择； 《伤心咖啡馆之歌》