This paper aims at analyzing the loss and recovery of equilibrium based on the life rhythm shared by all the living things. Cather seeks to treat with the ecological cycle by overcoming or removing obstacles, by slight variations, or by opportunistic adaptations. Cather believes that maintaining the pattern of the ecological cycle is the most elementary instinctual purpose of life, as an organism seeks to regain equilibrium in order to maintain that biological pattern. For her exploration of the pattern about this ecological cycle, Cather tries two experiments in content and form. One involved inserting Peter`s experiential world into Tom Outland`s natural world, the second connected Tom Outland`s natural world to the Blue Mesa with the historical traces of Pueblo Indians. Further inquiry into the treatment of the embodied places in Tom`s and Peter`s relationships between the Cliff City and the two houses indicates something of the place-centered imagination, recognizing how biology and culture interact. She avoids the one-dimensional approach that reads culture and nature according to the current reigning ideological stance, by her version on Tom`s research of Cliff Dwellers, and Peter`s experiences of two houses. Her ecological cycle reflects the new ecological thinking that is now developing in response to the interconnections between the human culture and the natural world, or between the human and the nonhuman.

Cormac McCarthy`s Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West (1985), opens the American Southwestern frontier after the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) as a space of racial exclusion and ruthless violence. While the work is understood as McCarthy`s most historic novel, McCarthy also presents the border area as a trope for the border of Western civilization and its tension and chaos. Revisiting the first war of American imperialism, McCarthy presents the violence as activated by disgust towards racial others. Disgust like other emotions is connected to perceptions and ideas and to the social and cultural contexts in which it makes sense to have the ideas and the emotions. Disgust can be a way of understanding the tension and confusion in the racist movement in American history. However, McCarthy goes further to explore the demented and compulsory violence of the band of killers led by John Glanton and Judge Holden, and shows disgust`s double movement of pulling away and toward. Disgust is a feeling of repugnance and expressed through violent acts of rejection. Disgust proclaims the meanness and inferiority of the object. In this sense, disgust includes the perception of hierarchy and does the work of maintaining it. Concurrently, as William Ian Miller observes, disgusting objects have power to allure. Freud and Kristeva also see the power of allurement inherent in the feeling of disgust, and point out that disgust involves the sense of danger of the unconscious desire or contact with the other within oneself. In this sense, disgust involves the movement of maintaining boundaries of the subject, the conscious, or the culture. Though the Glanton band in McCarthy`s novel begin their journey as Indian hunters for bounty, their act of slaughtering every being they encounter on their way and even those within the band shows the confusion in the border area. The Glanton band`s and Judge Holden`s violence becomes pursuit of continuance rather than verification of a political ideology. The movement of confusion in this work comes down to Judge Holden`s grotesque sexual impulse toward the object who he intends to kill. As the pursuit of continuance through violence erases the boundary between the band and the victims or the self and the other, Judge Holden`s will to domination erases the distinction between desire and rejection. Judge Holden`s example can be understood as the hidden impulse of American racism and further of Western civilization`s movement of settling and resettling boundaries through exclusions. Disgust in this sense can be understood as a mechanism of exclusion and an indication of the confusion inherent in the movement of repressing and censoring.

This paper tries to analyse the relationship between two main characters, Tom Ripley and Dickie Greenleaf in the framework of Melanie Klein`s theory of envy. Tom`s envy shows the same process which Klein mentioned, the idealization of the envied character and the transformation of it into violence on him. Given that Tom`s envy is fundamentally based on the class difference, it is likely to think the author tries to emphasize the harmful consequences of an unequal society. But Tom doesn`t show any concern about the social structure which creates and ensures unequality. Instead he aspires to belong to the world of wealth and privilege. In that sense in his envy we cannot find any impulse to criticize and change his society. But when we see that he succeeded in passing for Dickie through killing and perfectly imitating his identity, and enjoyed the pleasure of consumption of luxurious things such as clothes, bags, shoes and fountain pens which are believed to shape his identity and give the meaning of his existence, we come to glimpse a dark world where subject`s authenticity, meaningful relationship with others and the value of the spiritual are lost.

It is not surprising to say that The Great Gatsby represents American modernism since it artistically portrays the theme of "American Dream" in the twentieth century of America and reflects the turbulent transition of American society after World War I. In addition to "American Sublime," "American Dream" is one of the two main topics in the history of American literature that has been dealt with in many literary works recurrently from the early American times to the present. The beginning of American history starts with the Puritans who pursue the religious freedom. The forefathers of America placed a great emphasis on Christian ethics in their lives and could keep up a good living standard by hard working as time goes by. America comes to be the land of opportunity for everyone who works hard with his or her talent. After all, "American Dream" becomes a mythic motif for ordinary people in America. However, as materialism prospers and vulgar consumerism surges especially in "Jazz Age" after World War I, "American Dream" loses its archetypal virtues of Christian ethics. Unfortunately, "American Dream" without Christian ethics becomes a nightmare. Christian ethics is the essential factor in the interpretation of The Great Gatsby which deals with the disruption of American society. Above all, major couples in the novel do not reveal any Christian ethics which originates in the Bible. They are against the biblical system of marriage which signifies a blessing for a man and a woman by God and requires a husband and a wife to be faithful. They appear to be indulged in materialistic consumerism devoid of mental and spiritual ideas. At the same time, Gatsby as a main character partly shows some Christian ethics of temperance, hard working and diligence in the process of pursuing "American Dream," and that is what distinguishes him most from the other characters. In addition, Nick as a narrator and a character is portrayed as the person who emphasizes some moral virtues of Christian ethics from the very beginning to the end of the novel. Many critics of 21th century witness the return of religion especially led by Marxist theorists including Terry Eagleton, Alain Badiou, Giogio Agamben, Slavoj ZiZek, Jurgen Habermas and John Gray. Jacques Derrida also recognizes the reappearance of religion which is synonym for Christianity for Westerners. The Marxist theorists value Christian ethics as a power to ameliorate materialistic society of capitalism in 21th century. At this point, it is significant to reevaluate the value of Christian ethics in "American Dream" in The Great Gatsby.

The present paper examines Nathaniel Hawthorne`s Blithedale Romance in terms of morbidity inherent in antebellum middle-class culture. The chaos and confusion created by excessive social fluidity and mobility during the Jacksonian period made the middle class-the newly emerging hegemonic social group-feel chronically insecure about its own social status. Such middle-class anxieties led to the creation of the symbol of the "Veiled Lady," the image of an oppressively disembodied female body. This cultural image was vigorously promoted by the domestic ideal and the popular culture of the nineteenth century such as mesmerism and spiritualism in order to help white male middle-class Americans to forget the heartless reality of extreme capitalist competition. Middle-class culture, in turn, created Coverdale, an apolitical and voyeuristic consumer confined in the enclosed private world of the home, in which he consumed the lean and wan female image of the Veiled Lady to gratify his sexual and patriarchal desire vicariously. Blithedale is therefore designed as a place to reform this morbid state of middle-class culture. Its ambition for reform, however, is forestalled because it has been merely a mask to hide the egotism of middle-class reformers at Blithedale. Rather than reforming them, the utopian community exacerbates and drives into catastrophe their egotism and morbidity, simultaneously revealing structural limitations persisting in the cultural elements of the middle class such as domesticity, mesmerism, spiritualism, privacy, and consumerism. Eventually, in the process of investigating the failures of the utopian experiment, the author Hawthorne specifically exposes drawbacks intrinsic both to the middle-class reform ideology of sentimentalism through the disingenuous narrator Coverdale and to the middle-class genre of romance through the extravagantly abortive narrative of The Blithedale Romance. In other words, the writer disintegrates his existing authorial practices based on sentimentalism and the romance genre, discerning the impending violent breakdown of the corrupt middle class.

What is Jes Grew? To understand the concept of Jes Grew, this paper adapts Deleuze and Guattari`s concept of the schizophrenic. Jes Grew is the schizophrenic flow itself, a massive desiring machine that respects the flow itself and the changes it may bring. The characters who embrace the spirit of Jes Grew, in other words, the Jes Grew carriers learns that time and all that lives in it comes and goes like a pendulum. The process of becoming and the energy that is generated while the pendulum moves are considered the most important aspects reiterated in Reed`s works. And likewise, liberating beings from a certain definition, thereby allowing them to ``become`` desiring machines, is the goal of Deleuze and Guattari`s schizophrenic analysis. In this sense, Jes Grew is the closest thing to what Deleuze and Guattari call the schizorevolutionary art that "embraces all that flows and counter flows" (370). Therefore, although Papa Labas fails to restore the Jes Grew Text, the Jes Grew carriers will be able to rebel against the despotic socius despite its lack of the Text, for Jes Grew is not a simple name labeled to a certain form of art, but life itself.

John Steinbeck is one of the few American canonical fiction writers who describe real landscapes with genuine interest and concern, while incorporating natural, ecological, and environmental perspectives in writing. Such perspectives of his have greatly contributed to the fluctuations of his reputation through time as the perception of nature elements in literary works has differed in time. He was once hailed as a great writer largely due to his naturalism, but with the discoloration of overt naturalism in his work, his reputation declined drastically. Literary interest in his works rose once again in the mid-1970s when the tendency of evaluating his work from the naturalistic vein changed. The Steinbeck critics began to reevaluate his naturalism with different perspectives including ones that are somewhat similar to the contemporary concept of environmentalism and ecology. In fact, of all the American canonical fiction writers Steinbeck is the most potential environmental, ecological, and thus ecocritical writer, because he foreshadowed the basic tenets of contemporary environmental and ecocritical discourses. However, Steinbeck scholars` critical interest in environmental or ecological perspectives in his thinking and works turned out to be only a fad. What is stranger yet is that ecocritism, which launched with the intention of calling for environmental and ecological awareness through the reevaluation of literary works of nature, has hardly paid attention to Steinbeck. This short-life of interest in and little acknowledgement of Steinbeck`s environmental and ecological elements both in the Steinbeck community and in ecocriticism are largely attributable to the related established recognition that Steinbeck is a fiction writer and that ecocritical tenets do not fit fiction. Comprehension of Steinbeck`s modern perspectives of environment requires attention to his non-fiction as well, and weaving such perspectives with his nature-human relations demonstrated in his fiction provides a more comprehensive perspective to ecocriticism whose narrow deep-ecological tenets have avoided critical interest in fiction genre. It is here that Steinbeck demonstrates a new ecocritical prospective.

This paper examines three film adaptations of Mark Twain`s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Michael Curtiz`s film is the most widely watched version in Korea because it is the only imported DVD and has a Korean subtitle. Unfortunately, it is quite possibly the worst movie version of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It is at odds with the original novel not only in quality but also in plot, character, and themes. Stephen Sommers` adaptation is praised for its sensitive treatment of racial issues. However, fast-paced action adventures commonly found in Disney family movies make this version less satisfactory than it rightly deserves. Sommers` adaptation fails to catch Mark Twain`s dark humors and satires. Peter Hunt`s adaptation has been almost completely ignored by Korean critics due to wrong information on its availability. Hunt`s version is faithful to the original novel and, consequently, the most satisfactory film rendition to date. Yet, its length and slow pace make this version less powerful than the orignal.

This study tries to view Korean American novelists in the perspective of hybrid culture. Korean English literature scholars tended to concentrate on the problems of Korean immigrants` exclusion and alienation by main stream American society or the problem of their identity through Korean American novels. However, the perspectives that scrutinize into problems of domination/assimilation or of identity in Korean American novel is being doubted through the complex reality of hybrid culture. The perspective of hybridity required in the fast changing modern times questions positions that consider identity as being fixed or pure. The perspective of hybridity is an effort to explain the Korean American novels` complexity which is difficult for clear ethical evaluations to do within the opposition of resistance/ assimilation. This study evaluates Suki Kim and Chang-rae Lee as the representative Korean American novelists who intensely face with the ongoing American hybrid society. This study examines how the two novelists look upon the ethnic minorities` and racial problems differently from general ethnic writers and achieve significant narrative developments. Examining The Interpreter and her articles in American newspapers and magazines, we see how aspects of Suki Kim`s performative subject can be characterized as ``addressing to the American mainstream society as a immigrant.`` Chang-rae Lee has transcended the title of Korean American novelist and already established as a prominent modern American novelist. Aspects of Chang-rae Lee`s performative subject is exhibited in how he is striving in the difficult search for mutual understanding within the hybrid culture through Native Speaker and Aloft. This study also deals with the self consciousness and ethical demands of Suki Kim and Chang-rae Lee who rely on Korea and the life of the Korean immigrant as their asset.

This essay aims to investigate Herman Melville`s critique of his contemporary racism and law, focusing attention on his portrayals of skeleton images and biased legal practice against black mutineers in Benito Cereno. The ringleader Babo`s skull, the "hive of subtlety," represents the inscrutability of blacks` inner minds impenetrable from white Americans` perspectives and, thereby, undercuts widespread racism in Melville`s age that blacks are naturally submissive and have no intelligence enough to plot the revolt. The slaveholder Alexandro Aranda`s skeleton, the vestige of once powerful but now deceased master of slaves, signifies the author`s skepticism about the authoritativeness of the father figure, and such aspect more develops in Melville`s negative characterizations of Captain Amasa Delano and Captain Benito Cereno. The insufficiency of such father figures informing Benito Cereno because of their racial prejudice and, more important, of their lack of proper legal functioning may stem from Melville`s own observation of his "father-in-law" Lemuel Shaw, the representative of "father" figure and "law" from the author`s familial/sociopolitical contexts. As a Chief Justice of Massachusetts Supreme Court, Judge Shaw presided over the controversial legal issues concerning fugitive slaves and racial segregation during the antebellum period. Consideration of Judge Shaw`s legal rulings helps us recognize more clearly that Benito Cereno reveals Melville`s implicit critical voices against racism and unjust law pervasive in "American" society, displaying the gap between heavenly law (equality, freedom, and justice) and earthly law (securing slavery system).