Modern Chinese Literature - Book Report/Review Example

10 May Modern Chinese Literature: The story “Fin de Siècle Splendor” displays fragmentary nature of contemporary experience. Illustrate this belief in terms of the plot, temporal structure, characterization, etc. The story Fin de Siècle Splendor by Zhu Tianwen forms a perfect example of fragmentary nature of people in the contemporary world. This is because the story embodies the distorted nature and isolation of human beings in the modern world. Postmodern urban literature in China explores the kinds of themes which reflect distortion and decline of the human life in the society characterized by a mechanical lifestyle and high technology. As technology began to rule the world, lifestyles and values of people changed which also affected their behavior and thinking. This made a distorted mentality a dominant theme in the works of modern Chinese literature like Fin de Siècle Splendor. This work published in 1990 is one of the most prominent examples of urban literature and artistic expression in Taiwan. Zhu presents her main protagonist as Mia who is a witch character. Urban lifestyle is explored in this short story. Be focusing on the sensual memories of Mia with great delicacy, Zhu makes her feminine consciousness very prominent. This feminine consciousness keeps moving the readers throughout her representation of witches. Witches like Mia are portrayed as empowered, autonomous, and modern figures to challenge many stereotypes generated by a patriarchal society. The world in which patriarchal stereotypes thrive is criticized by Zhu claiming that such a world will collapse soon and “Mia with her memory of smells and colors will survive and rebuild the world from here” (Tianwen 402). Such an imaginative ending by the writer illustrates a postmodern vision in which women hope to be empowered. Mia resents the social order around her which characterizes contemporary world because it does not make her feel fulfilled, rather it contributes to her alienation. Many traditional or orthodox concepts are challenged by Zhu in her story. For example, the approach taken to temporal structure is very unique as the protagonist Mia lives in 1993, while this story gets completed by Zhu in 1990. Unlike previous works, the story is not told in accordance with the time order in Fin de Siecle Splendor. The plot relies heavily on sensual experiences of Mia requiring readers to understand those experiences in order to interpret the story. Mia’s and her friends’ values are very postmodern because in response to the decline in human nature, they also do not attach any importance to things which once used to matter a lot like relationships and family. They have very materialistic views and prefer married men with a lot of wealth to relationships based on love (Tianwen 389). Master Jifan in “Divine Debauchery” is a nonconformist. Explain the values he rejects and analyze his views in not conforming to the mainstream culture. In Mo Yan’s story titled Divine Debauchery, the character of Master Jifan is presented to readers as a nonconformist which makes this story a great example of postmodern literature. The common beliefs of postmodern era include judging a person’s worth on grounds of how many material resources he/she has. Such materialistic thinking has also lessened the importance of relationships between people in addition to blurring the line between humans and objects. Master Jifan, on the other hand, is a nonconformist who does not believe in any of these ideas and takes them for mere illusions which only work to distract humans from what is really important in life. In Divine Debauchery, Master Jifan’s critique of the widely accepted ideas and values related to wealth, material resources, and social status forms the major theme of the story. Some values he rejects include excessive importance attached to beautiful women and social status. Another value he rejects is that people who possess more material resources are happier than others in life or happen to be less disappointed in general. His idea is that material things do not hold the potential to determine a person’s happiness because they are only material and cannot reach out to soul of a person. He believes that all people believing more in material than social relationships are destined to be disappointed. Such beliefs held by Master Jifan stand in contrast to the widely accepted set of norms and values. There are myriad examples found in text which show how Master Jifan did not conform to the mainstream culture and actually took pride in the fact. For example, one day when he goes for a horse ride with his servant, he gives everything he is wearing to the beggars since he does not have any money on him. This act of great generosity earns him both content and jokes of the local children. It is told that by the time he reaches his destination, he gets “striped to his underpants” (Yan 134). His views behind not conforming to the mainstream modern culture are that wealth cannot make people happy and that everything not based on real values like love and compassion are just illusions. This is why despite having many resources and being a man of means, he never tried to get himself a high position in the government. Such examples tell us that Master Jifan is a nonconformist who does not care about using material gains to advance himself in society. This attitude sets him apart from the Confucius value system which was based on judging a man’s worth based not on his generosity, but on how many beautiful concubines and material resources he had. Everyone escapes from something. Analyze the conflict between human instinct to run away from undesirable situations and social expectations and obligations imposed upon individuals as represented by Chen Sanmai in Su Tong’s story “Escape.” What does this conflict mean to the moral values related to these expectations and obligations? Escape is a brilliant short story written by Su Tong. The story is based on the life journey of a poor man named Chen Sanmai who spends all his time trying to escape responsibilities and obligations. He does not pay any attention to his wife or to his family, rather he prefers to seek a way out. His desire to escape not only damages his own life, but also of his loved ones. The story seeks to convey this message that when people get caught up in the conflict between responsibilities and escape, they become too dysfunctional and blinded by their warped obsessions to survive. Such depravity has been injected into humanity with more and more people trying to escape the obligations they have towards others. This tendency has made people both ugly and vulnerable and Su attempts to reveal this ugliness and vulnerability of his characters through the story titled Escape. Some people spend their whole lives running away from things with the result that they remain unable to attain anything of value in life. They remain trapped in between obsession over freedom and family and professional responsibilities. Chen Sanmai is one such man who since childhood has been running away from things he needed to do. Su stresses that men who spend their lives in escaping things reach such a bad end that it leads others to make only one sad conclusion about them based on the history of their many escapes that they have always been timid and cowardly. The narrator reveals that his uncle Chen Sanmai had always been timid and cowardly claiming that such “is the conclusion you would reach from the history of his many escapes” (Tong 447). Such maddening effect Chen Sanmai’s obsession with escape casted over him that even his own father remembered him in scornful words. His father used to tell others, “That bastard Sanmai is a useless good-for-nothing” (Tong 447). He used to run away when asked to eat his food or take a bath or beaten to make him comply with social expectations. But, he just remained fixated on escape even after his parents found him a wife. “Except for figuring out how to run away, you’d never know what else Sanmai wanted to do” (Tong 447). This show that getting all wrapped up in a weird and catastrophic obsession over escape leads a man to no good. It is our responsibility to stand bravely in all undesirable situations and face the pressure in accordance with social expectations so that we could be remembered in good words by others. Work cited: Tong, Su. “ESCAPE.” The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature. Trans. Michael S. Duke. Columbia University Press, 2007. 445-454. Print. Read More