Historical Context paper – Author Project

April 26, 2009 Jessica Finne
Tags: Joyce Carol Oates, relationships, violence

Jessica Finne

Ms. Bazinet

English Honors III

27 April 2009

Where is the Peace?

 

Joyce Carol Oates, a seventy one year old woman born in 1938, has lived through and experienced many important events in history. Residing in the United States, Oates has learned how conflict arises and the United States’ actions have shown her how to deal with the issues. World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War and the War on Terror demonstrate what disagreements can do to the relationships between people. This idea is widely expressed in Oates’ writing.

“Love commingled with hate is more powerful than love. Or hate.” In many of Joyce Carol Oates’ pieces of work, an ordinary family or relationship with an internal problem that usually results in some type of violence is the usual setting. In her first novel written in 1964, With Shuddering Fall, is the story of a romance between a young, teenage girl and a thirty-year-old stock car driver. This relationship ends in death caused by an accident. A boy who murders his stepfather and then kills himself is the setting of A Garden of Earthly Delights. Written in 1969, them, follows the lives of the Wendalls, a poor family who live in the riotous Detroit slums. The story tells of the violence they had to endure. Joyce Carol Oates, as she said in the quote above, believes that when love is mixed with negative emotions, it becomes more powerful than anything does. She expresses this through her writing.

Joyce Carol Oates, although having an ordinary childhood and becoming successful, lived, and still lives, through a time of violence, conflict, and confusion. There is no peace in the world and Oates’ writes about the peace that is never among anyone.

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