Fictional Transfiguration Of Jesus Christ

Among the archetypes in western literature, the image of Jesus Christ plays a very important role. There are many underlying images of Jesus Christ in western literature. The spiritual meaning of love, endurance and salvation that represented through Jesus Christ has become the central strength of literature and also serves as a powerful weapon for the writers to express their ideality and criticize the mundane. Writers either propagandize their ideal or scrutinize the worldly society in the Christlike spirit in order to reveal the deficiency of politics, economy, law and religious regulations of contemporary society.With archetypal analysis as the theoretical guidance, this thesis chooses three famous novels at the beginning of 20^th century as the research object. They are F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, William Faulkner's Light in August and John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. Through analyzing the image of Jesus Christ embodied in the three protagonists, the present author intends to make a survey of the fictional transfiguration of Jesus Christ in a particular period.This thesis consists of four chapters. Chapter One illustrates the successive existence and evolvement of the image of Jesus Christ by making a general summary of the transmutation of it in American literature from a historical perspective. Chapter Two makes a comparison between Jesus Christ and the three protagonists on their life experiences and quest for identity. Chapter Three analyses the tragical character, miserable experiences and death of the three protagonists by applying the archetype of Scapegoat in the Bible. Chapter Four exhibits the cycle from temptation, degeneration and finally to resurrection of the protagonists and at the same time expatiates on the great significance brought by their "death and rebirth".Based the analysis on the biblical character Jesus Christ embodied in the three protagonists, this thesis has not only illustrated the importance of the image of Jesus Christ in the text, but also displayed the contradiction between civilization and human nature through the tragedies, dilemma and sufferings of these protagonists. The contradiction probably has resulted from human beings themselves. Consequently, the theme of human beings searching for redemption and resurrection is also revealed.