Embarrassment: Traditional And Modern

Due to his personal experience of life, Chen Zhongshi takes the rural areas as his writing object, depicting the embarrassment, the contradiction, the conflict and the entanglement of the traditional patriarchal Chinese society in the process of modernization. Chen does not make a simplified judgment on the traditional value and the modern value. He criticizes and praises both, but he does have a more ambiguous attitude towards the tradition.In this thesis, the author discusses the embarrassment depicted in Chen's novel between the tradition and the modern from four aspects.Introduction: The author gives a brief introduction of Chen's writings and fundamental tendency of Chen's works.Chapter 1: The author discusses Chen's attitude towards the traditional culture, morality and humanity which he criticizes and reflects upon but more often than not recalls with nostalgia. Chen Zhongshi maintains a positive attitude towards the "Good" in the humanity and looks forward to the bright side of humanity.Chapter 2 talks about Chen's thinking over the fact that the modern life order was introduced into the rural areas .In the author's opinion, Chen welcomed and reflected upon the introduction of the modern life order into the rural areas. In Chen's opinion, there must be some positive things which made the traditional life order last for thousands of years. If we discard the tradition completely, we will be plunged into the spiritual wilderness and find ourselves homeless.Chapter 3: In this chapter, the author discusses the novel Bailuyuan, and thinks that in this novel Chen Zhongshi expresses clearly the embarrassment between the tradition and the modern ,and his yearn for the tradition that is fading away. The author believed that Chen Zhongshi's thinking has a positive meaning for our building a rational and reasonable modern life order.