Joyce Carol Oates, American writer, occupies a unique place in twentieth-century literature. She achieved acclaim throughout her life as a novelist, essayist, and short story writer. Joyce Carol Oates' themes are impressive and she portrays the social and psychological problems that contemporary men and women face in their daily lives. He gives his best in projecting the harsh and violent world of the present time. It presents a realistic feel of life with a moral lesson to the reader. Joyce Carol Oates, like any other writer, chooses from the vast wealth of her experience. Daniel Hoffman states in his Harvard Guide to Contemporary American Writing: “Creativity thrived on alienation, some postwar writers insisted, or at least believed that the condition of alienation, which had played a nurturing role in promoting art, literature and modern thought, were too precious an asset to sell for an academic chair or a government position” (8). Tragic homelessness and alienation are key themes of modern writers. Oates is also accustomed to this tradition. Protest movements and social justice movements, the women's rights movement and a series of shocking events such as the assassination of President Kenndy in 1963, Malcolm X in 1965, Martin Luther King in 1967 and Robert Kennedy in 1968 and Watergate In the literature of this period, scandals are described that lead to feelings of doubt, anxiety and instability, and above all violence in society. So Oates' writings find no exception to the reflection of all these emotions. The drug-addicted, sexless, affectless young man who begged from strangers on the streets of any major city in North America was a sc... middle of paper... In Reaching Out: Sensitivity and Order in Recent American Fiction of women. New Jersey: Scare Leon Press, 1979. Print. Milazzo, Lee, ed. Conversations with Joyce Carol Oates. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1989. Print.Oates, Joyce Carol. The edge of the impossible: tragic focus in literature. New York: Vanguard Press, 1972. Print.- - - . New Heaven and New Earth: visionary experience in literature. New York: Vanguard Press, 1979. Print.- - -. The rise of life on Earth. New York: New Directions, 1991. Print.Perkins, George, ed. Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia of American Literature. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1991. Print.Riley, Carolyn. and. Contemporary literary criticism. Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1978. Print.Wagner, Linda M. ed. Critical essays on Joyce Carol Oates. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1979. Print.