A Comparative Study Of "Wasteland" Consciousness In Sister Carrie And The Abandoned Capital

In the Western world, the "wasteland" topos has been developing over a long historical period. It was only after the publication of The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot that did the expression "wasteland" consciousness began to draw extensive attention as a special terminology in literature. In the fields of Chinese and Western literature, there are a lot of literary works on the theme of "wasteland" consciousness, which express the spiritual decadence and desperation of modern people. Sister Carrie written by the famous American novelist Theodore Dreiser and The Abandoned Capital by the celebrated Chinese contemporary writer Jia Pingwa are such two novels.Although Theodore Dreiser and Jia Pingwa are from different countries and Sister Carrie and The Abandoned Capital are created under different cultural backgrounds in different times, the two novels share the same genre, the similar historical context, and a common theme. This thesis is going to employ comparative literature techniques to analyze the "wasteland" consciousness in the two works from the following three aspects:the historical context, the protagonist, and symbolic signs. Through a comparative study, it can be found that under the "wasteland" background of transitional period in both Western and Chinese society, Sister Carrie pursues her dream continually but ends in failure while Zhuang Zhidie repeatedly strives to save his soul but can not cast off his spiritual predicament. The symbolic signs "the rocking chair", "the cow" and the "xun music" will be shown to predict a decadent, lost and despairing ending. The analysis demonstrates that the two novels share the same "wasteland" consciousness through different stories and ways.Based on a thorough analysis, it will become explicit that during the process of the development of human society, the more developed the economy is, and the more abundant material affects, the more intense people's longing for spiritual contentment becomes. No matter which class, culture or social system they belong to, people may face the same spiritual crisis, which poses the ultimate question of the function of literature as a careful consideration and reflection of the human condition.