Overthrowing, Reconstruction And Distillation On Wolf Totem

"The Wolf Totem" gives a dozen stories full of complicated and bizzare plots about an alienated literary image, Mongolian wolves. It reflects on a series of profound topics regarding life:the improvement and optimization of nationality, conflicts of nomadic civilization and agricultural civilization, deep analysis of national character, exploration the way to rejuvenating the nation, dialectic research on the relationship between man and nature, as well as the possible approaches to balance the harmonious development of human society and nature.It is divided into 3 parts. The first part supplies a detailed image of wolf from the traditional point of view and its new transformation in the novel. In chinese literature works, the symbolic significance of the image, "Wolf" has gone through an evolution from "good" to "evil". In the end, it gets the long-established "evil" image in the Han culture. Boldly enough, the author of "The Wolf Totem" completely overthrows wolf's evil image in a series of wonderful stories. Wolfs have been transformed into an outstanding species which loves life and call for freedom, independence, bloodlessness, wisdom and gentleness. The traditional image of wolfs quietly disappears, hence lay the foundation for the whole construction of "The Wolf Totem". The second part deals with the reconstruction of the "totem wolf" At first it introduces the origin of totem and its social background, connotation and evolution. Then it tells why and how the wolf is turned into a totem, which is intended to supply a coordinate system to set the totem wolf in contrast to human beings, and it can help to model objectively the character of other grassland living things. By highly praising, refining and distillation of the Wolf nature, a strong contrast to human's lack of modern spirit is clearly given with the purpose of influencing human spirit, hence achieving the reconstruction of the meaning and development of the wolf totem. It becomes a wonderful reference to the value system for self-reliance and self-improvement.Finally, it lifts the wolf spirit, through contrasting the features of the wolf and sheep, it tells how to rebuild the nationalities. The book explains what was "sheep disease," and what was the "sprit of the wolf" and contrasts them in order to analyze the weakness of the "nationality" to "save" them. Through the reflection on the reformation of human spirit and change of one's own fate, it ask for attention to the environmental and ecological problems.