Title: The Sphinx Factor in Welcome to Hard Times

Abstract: The essay uses the Sphinx Factor in the theories of ethical literary criticism to explain the literary phenomena represented in Welcome to Hard Times （1960）, an allegorical novel by E. L. Doctorow, the American contemporary novelist. Analyzing this postmodernist novel reveals the essence of human beings in whom good and evil coexist and the immanent evil in man leads human society to self-destruction in a capitalist society. In the actions of reconstructing and destroying the small town Hard Times, Blue and the Bad Man from Bodie form an ethical conflict about whether to be a hero who protects the human society or become a demon that destroys human society. The novel embodies through this ethical conflict the value of moral edification to tell what is good and what is evil. From this new angle of ethical literary criticism, we see that, similar to literatures in any historical periods in the past, postmodernist literature’s essence is also ethical and its most essential function is also moral edification.

Keywords: ethic, ethical literary criticism, Sphinx factor, human factor, animal factor

Author: Shidan Chen, Professor, School of Foreign Languages, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China.