On Patrick White's Novels

Patrick Victor Martindale White is a famous Australian writer. He is also the sole Australian writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature till now and he brings Australian literature to the world. Though his creation style and language always arouse a heated debate, as the founder of Australian Modernism literature, his position is absolutely unshakable in Australian literature circles.The focus of White's works shifts from the conflict between human beings and the outside world in traditional literature to the exploration of the inner spiritual world of human beings. In White's novels, it seems that he always spares no efforts to explore the barrenness and apathy of human beings'spiritual world in the Western society, to analyze human nature and to represent human beings'loneliness, isolation and the impossibility of communication. Through depicting the"misery and salvation"of the spiritually distorted people, people's miserable experience of seeking a way out in maze but resulting in nothing is shown vividly in the abnormal capitalism society. The value of existence of human beings lies in that people find the way to salvation and prevent themselves from being destroyed by the evil of the heart after experiencing misery. White's novels also show that he diligently explores the secret of life and hopes to dig out the essence of life.White is greatly influenced by the Western Modernism creation techniques and he creates his unique"psychological narrative art"and shows the complicated and frequently-changing psychology of modern people by adopting the techniques such as the stream of consciousness, free association, shifting of time and space and dream, etc. He stresses to probe into people's inner spiritual world and to represent the complicated objective world by delineating modern people's spiritual world. He successfully incorporates the Western Modernism techniques with Australian Realism into his own creation, the theme shifts from representing the conflict between human beings and the outside world in Australian literature to probe into the human being's inner spiritual world, and by doing so he endows his novels with Australian flavor as well as striking Modernism features. He ushers in the"White Epoch"in Australian literature history and his contributions are self-evident.