A Study On The Archetypes Of The Characters In Mo Yan’s Novels

Characters are the heart and soul of Mo Yan’s Novels. They constitute the unique character pedigree in Mo Yan’s literary world--- Northeast Gaomi Township, which occupies an important place in the gallery of world literature and Chinese literature. The archetypes of most of the characters in Mo Yan’s novels can be found in the history and reality of Gaomi. The study of the relationship between the archetype and the characters in Mo Yan’s novels can help understand the essence of Mo Yan’s novels, the secret of his achieving success, and the unique value of the characters. This dissertation focuses on seven types of classic archetypes, such as the Anti-Japanese hero Yu Zhanao and the head of Gaomi County of Republic of China Cao Mengjiu in the novel Red Sorghum, the Anti-German hero Sun Bing in the novel Sandalwood Penalty, Mother and pastor Maloya in the novel Big Breasts & Wide Hips, the Aunt in the novel The Frog and other characters having Mo Yan as the prototype. The study of each archetypal character begins with the analysis of characters in novels, and then examines his/her archetypes in real life. Afterwards, the evolution from archetypes to literary characters is further explored so that the transcendent value of literary characters comes into light.The first chapter analyzes how the characters in Gaomi County evolve into the literary images in general. This chapter explores this mainly from three aspects: Mo Yan’s full use of the archetypal characters in his hometown; the characteristics of the evolution from archetypal characters to the literary characters; Mo Yan’s writing style and artistic pursuit beyond the description of archetypal characters. Many characters in Mo Yan’s novels are drawn from historical and realistic characters in his hometown. At the same time they are recreated by Mo Yan with his fictional use of the literary resources, martial arts resources, folk art, folk legends and other cultural resources that have been around for thousands of years in his hometown. Based on these, Mo Yan creates a series of colorful literary characters who are of great vitality, revolutionary as well as romantic spirit and are in earnest pursuit of freedom through his rich and unrestrained imagination, multiple and changeable narrative perspectives, smart and magnificent literary language, organic fusion of perception and rationality, and ultra-realistic character portraying techniques. These excellent literary images add color to Mo Yan’s novels, which contributes to his achieving excellence in the world and being an important figure in the history of Chinese literature and world literature.The second chapter analyzes the archetype of Yu Zhanao in Red Sorghum. Mo Yan creates a literary image--- "my grandfather" Yu Zhanao---a bandit hero in the novel Red Sorghu, opening a new chapter of hero writing in the new period. The archetype of Yu Zhanao is the bandit Gao Runsheng in the history of Northeast Gaomi Township, Anti-Japanese hero Cao Keming, Cao Zhizheng and Hokkaido caveman Liu Lianren. Mo Yan creatively weaves their stories together and ultimately generates a classic literary image embodying the spirit of Red Sorghum in this piece of land, which is of unique aesthetic significance and literary value. Yu Zhan’ao embodies the primitive vitality of human, who is a folk hero bathed in Qi culture. He is straightforward, courageous, and dares to go beyond the traditional moral restraints. He is exuberant and wild, is "both a hero and a bastard", who has become one of the important literary characters of rich implication in contemporary Chinese literature.The third chapter deals with the archetype of Cao Mengjiu in the novel Red Sorghum Family. The image of Cao Mengjiu in Red Sorghum derives from the real historical figure named Cao Mengjiu,who was the head of Gaomi County of Republic of China. In the novel, Mo Yan endows this character with rich emotion and spiritual pursuit by some newly coined stories, representing the combination of both historical rationality and human care. Cao Mengjiu is honest and brave, humorous and wise, merciful and compassionate, who has become a typical artistic image which embodies traditional Chinese national spirit, and is of rich historical and cultural connotation and attractive personality.Chapter Four explores Sunbing’s archetype in Sandalwood Penalty. Anti-German hero Sun Bing is one of the protagonists in Mo Yan’s full-length novel Sandalwood Penalty which was published in 2001. Its archetypal character comes from an anti-German hero Sunwen in Gaomi as well as a folk artist of Mao opera in Gaomi, which also has the image of Jesus in it who was willing to be crucified on the cross for the redemption of mankind sins. In this novel, Mo Yan constructs a new anti-Germany hero Sun Bing by integrating various historical and cultural elements in the past and at present, home and abroad together. By means of this new image of a tragic hero, Mo Yan achieves artistic innovation and exhibits his broad mind and world view.The fifth chapter analyzes the archetype of mother in Big Breasts & Wide Hips. Mother Shangguan Lu is benevolent, kind, and broad-minded, and she is eventually converted into Christianity. This image reflects Mo Yan’s affection for his mother, his love for the Mother Earth, and his pursuit of the spirit of faith. While exhibiting the kindness and generosity of his mother, Mo Yan integrates the spirit of freedom and tenaciousness of women in Qi region with such qualities as procreation, love, tolerance, dedication, and salvation of the goddess, thereby creating a "mother" image, which is the perfect combination of humanity and divinity. The creation of such a successful image reveals Mo Yan’s good mastery of literary writing skills which merge well the elements of folk with history, reality with religion.Chapter Six explores the archetype of pastor Maloya in Mo Yan’s novel Big Breasts & Wide Hips. Maloya is a localized and humanistic pastor labeled with Mo Yan’s style. Mo Yan composes this literary image based on the story of Swedish missionaries preaching religion in China Mo Yan ever heard of in his childhood, the pictures of pastors in Gaomi Dongguan church which he ever saw plus his understanding of life and work etc. The rich connotation of pastor Maloya endows the novel with multi-facets and enhances the artistic appeal of it, reflecting the important features of Mo Yan’s novels—the harmony of history and contemporary era,the integration of world and local cultures.Chapter Seven analyzes the archetype of Aunt in the novel The Frog. The main plot of the novel goes along the life experience of Aunt Wan Xin, who is a gynecologist in rural Northeast Gaomi Township, to expose the painful life of people living there and the conflict between reality and dream with the family planning policy lasting for 60 years in China as the background. The novel creates a successful image of Aunt, which is a combination of love and repentance, sadness and compassion. In reality, this image drives from Mo Yan’s own aunt named Guan Yilan. This dissertation explores the origin and the literary evolution of this image from her life experience, personality traits, mental state, and so on. The image far goes beyond the archetypal character and achieves its literary significance, thus revealing the pain of life and people’s longing for goodness. The novel is filled with poetic feelings of universal philanthropy, and also the compassion concerned with sin and repentance.Chapter Eight mainly focus on the analysis of the prototype of Mo Yan himself, taking Black Boy, Mo Yan, Li Yidou, Shangguan Jintong, Lan Jiefang, Ke Dou as the example. From the "Black Boy" in The Transparent Carrot, it seems that we can find the image of little Mo Yan in his childhood. From Mo Yan and Li Yidou in The Republic of Wine, we can see Mo Yan’s persistent pursuit of art and literature and true value of life. From Shangguan Jintong, we read Mo Yan’s weaknesses as an intellectual. From Lan Jiefang and Mo Yan in Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out, we know Mo Yan’s deep love for life even after going through the wind and rain. From Ke Dou in The Frog, we understand the pain and repentance in Mo Yan’s heart. These figures reflect Mo Yan’s own complex personality on one hand and life experience and great passion for life on the other hand. In all, Mo Yan incorporates his defiance of traditional Confucian culture, his longing for Dionysian spirit, and his interpretation of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism, the spirit of Christ and Qi Culture into his creation of fictional figures. Most of the characters in his novels are of rich cultural connotation and they are vigorously romantic and brave to fight against unfairness and pursue freedom in life just like Mo Yan himself. In his works, Mo Yan reshapes these characters through metafiction, unreliable narration and other narrative expression from three-dimensions, which not only makes them more charming, but also highlights Mo Yan’s view of history, literature, values and humanistic care for life.The concluding chapter gives a summary of how Mo Yan creates his own kingdom of literary characters based on the archetypes and then makes further exploration of the spiritual pursuit of fictional characters, and finally makes analysis of the new academic growing point of the archetypal studies in Mo Yan’s novel. On the whole, Mo Yan draws on the resources in real life and the essence of character creation in ancient and modern literary works and incorporates these into his creation of literary characters. He devotes his deep love for native soil and insightful revelation of such eternal topics as love and hate, life and death, good and evil to constructing his fictional characters who not only go beyond archetypal characters, but also beyond his hometown, and beyond the era, so that these typical literary images are shining in the world’s literary pantheon. In short, Mo Yan constructs his Northeast Gaomi Township character pedigree with his gifted pen and portrays them vividly physically as well as mentally in the simplest but the best way, thereby creating a legendary world of history and life for more than a century. The unique and wonderful creativity on archetypal characters lights up the magical world- Northeast Gaomi Township, and at the same time helps Mo Yan achieve world fame.