The Study On The Images Of Intellectuals In The KMT-controlled Areas And The Enemy-occupied Areas In The 1940s

The issue of intellectuals is an important theme of literature in the 20^th century. It is not only the commitment to the history but also the concern about the reality through analyzing the images of intellectuals in the novels and then further considering the spiritual track of intellectuals themselves.Based on the careful reading of the texts of the novels and by means of relevant theories about intellectuals,this thesis adopts the methods of analysis and combination of the comprehensive study of the literature and case study.From the angle of "human nature",this thesis focuses on the images of intellectuals in the KMT-controlled areas and enemy-occupied areas in the 1940s.Through the relationship of interactive dialogue of images,authors and environment,this thesis observes and probes into the living predicaments,human nature and cultural and historical significances of intellectuals,and at the same time tries to fill up the gap and deficiency in the research field for the intellectuals.Besides introduction and conclusion,this thesis is divided into five chapters.The first four chapters explore the images of the intellectuals from their main field domains of war,family,marriage and campus respectively.The last chapter penetrates into the psychological change of the writers at that cultural context in order to understand the images of intellectuals more thoroughly and impressively,to explore the mental experience of the authors and the main characters in the road of spiritual exploration and the painful pursuit of the spiritual lives of them.Chapter one analyzes the images of intellectuals under the background of the war.First of all,it investigates the effect of the war towards intellectuals.As a special survival state of the mankind,the war is the greatest ordeal on the human nature.In the flames of war,the ugly and the beautiful human nature are all reflected.Through the insight into the war we can reconsider the human situation and dig out various deposits about human society,history and culture.The storms of the 1940s had a great and profound impact on the writers of that age:It broke the safe and peaceful order of the life and the intellectual had to endure the torture of their soul in the turbulent years.They deserted or surpassed their shallow optimism and drifting fantasy and began to think more profoundly.The issue of "nationality" was attached more importance again and writers were awaken further spiritually.The war inspired their unparalleled courage and passion and their creative enthusiasm,in this way their writing styles had profound changes.From the second to the fifth section,through the description of the characters it investigates the intellectual's different choices of life.Part two focuses on the images of growing intellectuals clinging to their beliefs.The clinging intellectuals of that time had lofty ideals, spirits of self-sacrifice and innate senses of mission.They could always keep the optimistic minds and strong willpower to confront the misfortune of the life.They gave up their intellectual pursuits of academic study for a military career resolutely, and plunged into the fire of anti-Japanise war and realized their spiritual renaissance in this process.Many educated women grew with the war,and began to free themselves from the traditional morals and concepts.They won a victory over their weaknesses and endured double tortures physically and spiritually,and paid a heave price of" the loss of human nature".All of these became the shining points of the novels in this period.The intellectual's final anchoring into the community meant the loss of their independent spirits on the whole.Their personalities disappeared and they depended on the community and eventually made the individual sacrifices for the greater benefits of the units.Part three analyzes the images of the intellectuals with their ideals disillusioned and alienation towards the revolution.Failure and setback changed the ardent and enthusiastic youth into the depressed "winged bird". They became cynical,fateful,and pessimistic and got along senselessly with vacant minds or even tumed into the moralists of the feudalism.The intellectual,having no ambitions and alienating from the current of the revolution and only looking for worldly ideals and the realization of certain features of human nature in the turbulent times,the fatal misfortune for them was unavoidable.They hesitated and disconcerted,moved around and sighed but had no courage to find a road of new life so they doomed to be the victim of the times.The fourth section analyzes the irresolute and evadable images of the intellectuals.The reality of the war,the turbulence and the stagnancy fully exposed their weaknesses of cowardice and irresolution.They did not have the profound thinking and the strong personalities. They were not willing to accept the mediocrity yet not achieved at anything.They were impractical and purposeless so they were surely to accomplish nothing.The other intellectuals might as well choose to escape.Escaping from the calamity and obeying to the trend of the times were their philosophy of life.They were to lead a quiet and trivial life and did not dare to confront with the reality of life themselves. They were used to be self-control and self-depreciation and narrowed their existence in a limited scope to the utmost.Through the characters of the novels,the authors want to solve the intellectuals' problems of how to locate themselves amomg others. In the greatly changed and disrupted times and after the ordeal of the tempest,the ranks of intellectuals presented great complexity.Section five analyzes the images of the intellectuals with their human dignity degrading and the human nature alienating.The description and revelation of the self-deprivation intellectuals with their spirits aberrant is an important characteristic of the novels in the period of the war.The social contexts,the weaknesses of the human nature and of the intellectuals themselves are the main reasons for why the intellectual,who are educated by the traditional morals,manifest so great variations of their nature.Chapter two analyzes the images of intellectuals with the background of the family.Part one reviews the relation between the family culture and Chinese modern literature.As an integral part of Chinese traditional culture,the family culture has rich and complex connotation.Family narrative is one of the most fruitful divisions of Chinese literature in the twentieth century.It is a unique method of self-concern for most modern writers and generally expresses a modern sense of anxiety.Figures in the family novels are mostly the images of intellectuals and it is largely the record of the intellectual's mental world in the century.Section two analyzes the images of the declining family's eldest son in the later feudal society.They are the entia of the contradiction.The complex connotations of their characters have the rich aesthetic value and contain rich cultural symbols.The eldest son has the strong sense of responsibility and spirits of sacrifice,yet humble and docile characters.The reason of the eldest son's tragedy is owing to such traditional characters.They are on the road of the transition from the tradition to the modern times and in the fierce conflict of Chinese and western culture,contradiction of the old and the new.The basic reason is the internal paradox of the family culture based on the kinship and familial affection.Section three takes Jiang chunzu as an example,analyzes the rebel image in the family and expresses the tough spiritual development of modern intellectuals. They relentlessly look for their spiritual home and pursue the transcending of the life. The tragedy of Jiang chunzu is the tragedy of the times and the character.Chapter three analyzes the intellectual in their love and marriage.Section one summarizes the evolution of the theme of love in the literature.Love in modern literature is always attached to such discourse as enlightenment,revolution and the social class.Compared to the idealistic color and romantic sentiment of the traditional love,the intellectual's love has rich contents and is mixed with more social activities of the 1940s.It dispels the sacred halo and eternal traits of the traditional,ideal love.The description of love which is against the romanticism and the idealism appears.The wrting of conventional love is resumed.Section two takes the love of Wang wenxuan and Zeng shusheng as an example and analyzes the intellectual's struggle for self-rescue.Out of the strong desire for life and the call of human nature Zheng shusheng triumphs over the traditional morals and helps him on to the road of self-rescue.Section three analyzes living circumstance and life tragedy of intellectuals through the image of Fang hongjian.The tragedy of human nature lies in the ignorance of the living circumstances,the loneness of the inner world,the minds depressed and despaired but still dreaming to supass.It is also lies in the paradox of man's finity and the pursuit and consequence,the ideal and the reality,the hope and the actuality.In and out of "the besieged city" are the metaphor of confusion about human nature's complexity and the intellectual's spiritual dilemma of that generation.Section four describes educated women's sadness of love.They are eager to dominate their destiny but can't obtain the real happiness of marriage.They are under the inferior condition in spiritual,economy,culture and the society.The constraints of women's weakness and the concern of man's viewpoint form the unrealistic personality of the educated women of that time.Chapter four analyzes the images of intellectuals in the campus.Section one probes into the intellectual's living conditions.They were mostly plagued by the poverty,the illness,and endured the hardships of the moving from one place to another.Concerned with the mental condition,the professors of Southwestern Associated University can be regarded as a good role model of Chinese intellectuals, whereas the petty-intellectuals in the primary and middle schools generally are depressed,weary and are in difficult circumstances.Section two lashes the human nature by way of examing the ugliness through analysis of the images of the intellectuals in the novel ---"The Besieged City".Their falsification,their cheat,their hypocritical faces,their acting,their intrigue,their speculation and naked shamelessness,all of which stem from" the hairless,biped animal's innate badness", namely,the ugliness of human nature,the decadent culture and mental consciousness.Section three analyzes the anomaly of the intellectual's novels in the 1940s---"the Endless Song".The campus of Southwestern Associated University is like a Xanadu of peace,colorful and filled with the beauty of the human nature everywhere.Chapter five seeks the intellectual's spiritual development through the interactive relations between the author and the works.Section one investigates the intellectual's misery and confusion about the affirmance of their characters in the process of transformation from the traditional "scholar" to the modern society.In the social context of the 1940s,the individual' strong sense of social responsibility, social critiques,individual integrity and classical values of life all based on the fowing rules:the individuals should obey the interests of the community.But then all of which are degraded.The individuals were confused without an anchorage,their passions for life sank,their weaknesses of human nature stood out and their morbid state of characters came to a full display.Section two analyzes the creative mentality of the authors.The Description about intellectuals mainly comes from the experience in exile and the inspiration of the times.The exile makes the authors focuse on their existence directly.They manifest more practical undertaking of the individual's moral ethics,the depression about reality and the loss of the spirits.Their sense of the times comes from their attitude towards the real life.Section three discusses the social criticism and the self-examination of the intellectuals.From the criticism of "nationality" in the time of May 4^th movement to the criticism of human nature in the 1930s and 1940s,the connotation of human nature reflected by the novels becomes more abundant and the criticism about human nature is more profound and more humanized.At the same time,the intellectuals put the spearhead of the criticsm at themselves and they have more profound understanding and introspection about their own weaknesses of servility,arrogance and self-humiliation.The conclusion summarizes in brief the deficiency of novels about intellectuals in the KMT-controlled areas and the enemy-occupied areas in the 1940s.The weakness of the intellectuals is the weakness of the human nature to a large extent. The atrophy and the spiritual shatter of the images of the modern intellectuals are the combined effects of the extrusion between the traditional,the historical factors and the real world.The dependency of the intellectuals,namely,the nature of servility is the chronic illness of the modern intellectuals.Re-establish the independent spirits and re-build the characters of the rigidity is an important task for the intellectuals to heal themselves to become fulfilled,and so in a further way to develop the healthy and sound personalities.