From Naturalistic Savagery to Humanistic Redemption: Artistic Transformations in Joyce Carol Oates's Short Stories

One of the most celebrated, prolific, and provocative writers of contemporary America, Joyce Carol Oates is widely acclaimed for her generic experimentations, which in turn facilitate her deep engagement with the depiction of the human condition. This paper highlights a significant transformation in Oates’s creative oeuvre and her artistic sensibility over her five-decade long writing career and argues that her stylistics has evolved from deploying a savage naturalistic worldview to articulating a redemptive humanistic vision. By critically examining five of her representative short stories, each from one decade since the sixties to the present, this paper aims to establish that the shifts in Oates’s artistic focus not only characterize the author’s mellowing sensibility but also emblematize her response to the changes in the literary imagination within the USA. It, therefore, reads “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” (representing the 1960s), “The Tryst” (the 1970s), “Golden Gloves” (the 1980s), “The Hair” (the 1990s), and “Mastiff” (the new millennium) to assert that Oates’s literary musings, beginning with the turbulent counterculture years and culminating in the globalized new millennium, exhibit a remarkable transition from a naturalistic to a humanistic temperament.