Abstract

 May Sarton is a famous American novelist and poet. Sarton’s journals are very popular among people. At Eighty-two is Sarton’s last journal of her daily life from the age of eighty-one to eighty-two. Displaying day-by-day routines of her own life, she shows readers her real life of old age—visiting friends, writing, reading and gardening. What’s more, the word “depression” appears frequently in this journal. So this paper mainly focuses on Sarton’s depression. First, reasons that make Sarton depressed will be presented in this paper. Her depression is caused by various reasons, such as the bad weather, poor health and so on. And through the analysis about the experiences of depressing feelings that Sarton writes in her journal, this paper intends to reveal the relations between aging and depression. Meanwhile, this paper also plans to dig out the useful struggle and ways she adopts in confrontation with her own bad emotions and to conclude the model significance in At Eighty-Two that Sarton takes different ways to fight against the anxiety and to improve her life quality. 

Keywords: May Sarton; aging; depression; At Eighty-two; journal writing

Contents

Abstract

摘  要

1. Introduction-1

1.1. Brief introduction of May Sarton and At Eighty-two-1

1.2. Literature review-1

1.3 The Purpose and Structure of the Paper-4

2. Depression and aging-6

2.1 The Definition of Depression-6

2.2 The Relation between “Depression”and “Aging”-6

3. Reasons of Sarton’s Depression-8

3.1 The bad weather-8

3.2 Loneliness-9

3.3 Poor Physical Condition-10

3.4 Trivial matters without creativity-10

3.5 Friends’ deaths-11

4.The Means Against Depression-13

4.1 Writing-13

4.2 Interacting with friends-13

4.3 Full of hope-14

5. Conclusion-16

References-17