Ｍale Created By The Writer Shen Congwen

Greater attention has been turned to female characters created by the writer Shen Congwen whilst less to their male counterparts for lacking distinct images.After careful study of the works by Shen, I find that his male characters far outnumber the females ones, and they are involved in broader social levels. It's the males who embody Shen's ideal of curing the national diseases of hypocrisy, cowardice and selfishness by instilling the healthy, pure and active moral elements preserved in low-class people. To make up for the dificiency of full-figured individuals, I try to bring together some representative male characters and divide them into urban men and rurual men in accordance of the method adopted by most researchers and they are subdivided by occupation and social status. In doing so, I hope it will compensate the deficiency of the male"quality"with the superiority of their"quantity"and we will have a new understanding of different group images.We can reach three conclusions in studying the male characters in the method of group image study. First, by this method, all types of male characters become more rounded and multi-dimensional. Thus it lacks the shortness of Shen's novels depicting characters only in certain stage or facet due to the novels'short length and prose style. Second, I find that the characters are homogenous and their stories are continuous and complementary. Third, by grouping them toghter, we can see that Shen's novels are written in the objective of building the Greek temple in worship of humanity and reviving the vitality of the Miao culture, a more primitive and vigorous local culture, and they are clear and logical and distinct from each other.Apart from Introduction and Conclusion, the paper consists of two parts. Part 1 deals with the types and traits of Shen's male characters and classifies them into two catagories: urban men, rural men, Urban men are subdivided into gentlemen, intellectuals, clerks and urban poor. Rural men are subdivided into peasants, sailors, the Miao males and soldiers. After discussions of each type comes the analysis of it. Part 2 discusses the cultural connotations of the male characters: first, the opposition of urban and rural men in the eyes of country folk; second, the absence of male political roles in the concept of life philosophy and third, the feminization tendency of males under the influence of circumstances.