从《小城风光》看美国人的价值观

桑顿·怀尔德 (ThorntonWilder 1 897— 1 975 )是美国文坛上杰出的作家 ,他的剧作《小城风光》(OurTown ,1 93 8)是他戏剧创作的最高成就。这是一部完全表现凡人小事的戏剧 ,它用白描的手法不加渲染地描写了新英格兰一个小城的风貌和两个家庭的日常生活。剧中既没有复杂曲折的情节 ,也没有剑拔弩张的冲突 ,整个作品充满了一种温馨的田园诗式的情调。作者赋予这个小城以一种普遍的意义 ,谱写了一首歌颂生活美、赞美人生的田园抒情诗。美国文化中最主流的价值观———平等、民主、个人主义自力精神、美国梦式的自我实现、实用主义传统文化精神等在作品中都有所体现。

American Values as Shown in Our Town

Thornton Wilder (1897-1975) is an outstanding writer in American literary circles. Our Town (1938), which marks the summit of his dramatist career, is a play about mediocrities and trifles, plainly depicting the look of a town in New England and daily life of two families. There are neither complicated plots nor trigger-imminent conflicts; the whole play exudes an idyll-harmonious atmosphere. The town is endowed with the universal meaning, like an idyllic eulogy of life. Equality and democracy, individualism and independence, self-realization of the American dream and pragmatism-all these mainstream values in American traditional culture are also manifested in this work.