To Be Or Not To Be

Although Canadian novelist Michael Ondaatje and Chinese writer Jia Pingwa lives in different cultural background, they share some similarities in their life experience: they are "immigrants" from the backward place to the advanced one; they root deeply in the culture of their hometown or motherland; they both act as writer, professor and editor; they are writers with the heart of poet... Those similar features are reflected in their literary creation and tie them together, this is much more obvious in their works the English Patient and the Case Report respectively. Under the theme of love, the two novels both show the concern toward the individual. The pursuit of love is a way of pursuing freedom in fact; it is another expression of the individual's struggle against the indifferent world. Considering the background of the writer as well as the theme and writing technique applied in the novel, it is natural to draw the conclusion that there is some common nature between the human being, no matter occidental or oriental. This paper is going to discuss the similarities between the English Patient and The lase Repore from the perspective of "naturalism" in order to reveal the deep-rooted religious and philosophical thought behind the novel.