TRANSFORMATION OF CULTURAL IDENTITY “THE GRAVEDIGGER’S DAUGHTER” BY JOYCE CAROL OATES

Abstract

Joyce Carol Oates’s novel The Gravedigger’s Daughter was released on June 1st, 2007 and ranked 17tfeh on the New York Times bestseller list. This novel was nominated in National Book Review Novel Award. Culture identity mainly refers to the collective identity of a cultural subject in the face of a strong culture and a weak culture, and the resulting strong ideological turbulence and great mental suffering, the salient features can be summarized as an anxiety and hope, the coexistence of pain and joy of the main experience. The Gravedigger’s Daughter narrates the story of the heroine Rebecca’s hidden Jewish identity in American life, pursuing the American mainstream status and finally shaping a hybrid identity. It reveals the immigrants’ seeking identity choice in anti-Semitic environment. In this paper, I will use cultural identity theory to analysis how an American Jewish girl thinks about her own cultural belonging and identity choice in the conflict and collision with heterogeneous culture; after the successful integration of Jewish immigrant family into American society, her own ethnic culture as a cultural power to restrict, regulate and influence herself and eventually lead her to realize that she should return to her original cultural identity.