The Construction Of Historical Setting In Ha Jin's Novel Waiting

In this thesis, the writer spares no effort to analyze the construction of historical setting in Ha Jin's novel Waiting, and further on, points out Ha Jin's real purpose in constructing historical setting that way and the objective effect it reaches.By partially employing the theory and practices of New Historicism, after times of textual reading of Waiting, starting from disagreement with the reviews of Ha Jin and also some western critics on Waiting, the writer, under the guidance of New Historicism, makes a textual analysis of Waiting to make clear the way Ha Jin constructs the historical setting.As such a standpoint sounds reasonable to the writer that"New Historicists view an aesthetic work as a social production, for them a text's meaning resides in the cultural system composed of the interlocking discourses of its author, the text, and its reader",[1] thus to check the effects of Ha Jin's historical setting constructed in his aesthetic work need take not only his subjective efforts into account, but also the length and stresses of the text itself concerning the historical setting construction part, that is, the objective quantity and quality into account; other than these two aspects, the reader's understanding is also indispensable in checking the effects of Ha Jin's construction of historical setting in the novel. That echoes with D. H. Lawrence's famous saying—"Never trust the artist, trust the tale."Thus, on the bases of the theory of New Historicism, the writer divides the thesis into chapters to analyze as the following.The introduction aims to introduce the existing researches on Waiting, the writer's writing purpose and significance as well. Chapter one gives a brief introduction of New Historicism, its origin, development, characteristics, practice, the methodology as well as relationship between texts and history.Chapter two and chapter three mainly deals with the construction of historical setting in Waiting. Jin constructs the historical setting into shape by relying on the join forces of three aspects which would be discussed in chapter two and chapter three. The first section of this chapter discusses the first aspect of the three strengths which mainly expounds upon the writer Ha Jin's life experience and thereby elicits the prototype of the story. While in the second section, the social rules and dictates found within the text would be discussed, and that is the second aspect of the three strengths.Chapter three deals with reflections of the work's historical situation as evidenced in the text, which is the last aspect of the three strengths. To make that clear, the thesis lists and analyzes the reflections found within the prologue and the ensuing three parts of the novel.In Chapter four, Ha Jin's purpose of constructing historical setting that way and its effect are under discussion by three steps. Starting from the basic purpose and effect, section one aims to illustrate that the reason why Ha Jin constitutes historical setting that way is trying to serve story-telling. Section two shows how Ha Jin tries his best to transcend plain story so as to make his novel history-transcending. In section three, the effect gained by Ha Jin's construction of historical setting that way is analyzed.At last, there is the conclusion of this thesis. From the above analysis, we can see that the similar reviews made by western critics and Ha Jin himself are not completely believable. Ha Jin constructs history in his own particular way as interpreted in the previous chapters, and by doing so, he refers to something. The construction of history is very important to the development of his story, not at all as simple-functioned as what Ha Jin said,"The book focuses on its framework and references to ground the story in a place and time, but other than that, I don't see the point in bringing up too many temporary references."[2]In this thesis, by providing a new angle in understanding Ha Jin's novel Waiting, the writer aims to throw out a minnow to catch a whale.