A Critique Of Orientalist Conventions: John Steinbeck's Way Of Reconstructing The Images Of The Chinese

John Steinbeck is one of the greatest writers who won the Nobel Prize yet arouse vast quantities of acrimonious arguments and controversies. He was a man of some complexity, full of contradictions. So did his writing, of which the early ones can be so good-a prose so smooth, a touch so delicate, an insight into human nature so precise-compared with the simple, empty, sentimental, stereotyped later works that few readers really appreciated just how much skill and talent was involved. It is such "unevenness" in his literary experimentation that makes him attacked and praised at the same time, especially his later works. In fact, his later works develop and express his insisting philosophical themes growing beyond his former accomplishments in view of other disciplines and cultures to pursue the aim of widening his perspective to arrive at greater truths. In books Cannery Row and East of Eden, Steinbeck stepped forward, in which he absorbed other cultural elements to present a large picture of imagination that was not portrayed in his former works.In this thesis, I will concentrate on Steinbeck's inimitable way of reconstructing the images of the Chinese, Lee Chong and Lee, in his two later novels, Cannery Row and East of Eden, which primarily demonstrate Steinbeck's creative innovation. Through analyzing how American Orientalist conventions comes into being in American literary history, and how it functions and stereotypes the images of the Chinese in American literature, I demonstrate that Steinbeck's innovative strategies of reconstructing the Chinese images are to be truly realistically objective and to strengthen the commonness while reserving the difference; the significance of these two novels is that they are a critique of American Orientalist conventions.Chapter one reviews the research situation on Steinbeck in the West and China, and the existing problems in the study. On this background, I propose my research perspective and argument. In Chapter two, I will respectively construe the characteristics of LeeChong and Lee to show that Steinbeck not only treat them as an ordinary American, but also accept them as friends and encourage them to pursue right, freedom and happiness like other people in America. The images of Chinese in the novels are friendly and wise. Chapter three will begin with a geographical and historical exploration of why and how images of the Chinese are distorted: the specialty of California decided the fate of the Chinese when they firstly flushed into this land; the national priority and the conventional latent American Orientalism unconscious helped to fix the distorted stereotype of the Chinese immigrants as the "other", which as well accelerated the power of American Orientalist discourse. Comparing with such a partial convention, Steinbeck attempts to reconstruct the images of the Chinese objectively, and represent truthfully their life conditions, social status and psychological reality. Such an innovative reconstruction proposes a new type of relationship between ethnic groups not only for the American but also for all the humankind. His contribution to literature and to the world deserves more admission and confirmation.