Anxiety And Ask

Great changes have taken place in China in 1990s. As the competition in the market economy becomes even more intense, the contradiction within the social structure becomes increasingly apparent and the gap between the rich and the poor becomes even wider. The issue of survival of the disadvantaged group who has no say neither in economy nor politics nor culture has gained widespread attention from the society. The writing about the unprivileged grassroots, which has always been ignored by fashion writers and critics, comes into the eyesight of the people and becomes a new cultural growth point. Many writers shift their eyes to such people and write about their life and vividly display their society, involving intellectuals'great concern over current social issues and anxiety over the way out. Numerous comment articles focus on the unprivileged grassroots."The unprivileged grassroots"become a focus at the first years of 21st century and has entered into the field of literary theory and becomes an important topic for intellectuals.This essay has the novels on the unprivileged grassroots as the subject. The first chapter is the retrospect of the roots in China and other countries. From Paris's Secret by French writer Eugene Sue to Bottom of Society by former Soviet novelist Maxim Gorky, from the left-wing literature at the onset of the 20th century to "New realistic novel" at the end of the 20th century, the life conditions of the people at the bottom of the society have never been pulled away from the scope of novel and has been one of the important subjects. Then this essay discusses the reasons for the rise of current novel on the unprivileged grassroots. On the one part, social reasons– with the market competition increasingly more intense, people begin to strongly realize the urgent meaning of reality of emphasizing social fairness and equality. Reflecting the hardship of stay-at-home peasants, the grief and joy of peasants who has left the land and entered into the city, and the pain of unprivileged urban people naturally draw the attention from crowds of writers. On the other part, internal reasons with the literature development– the contemporary Chinese literature has painfully found that direct description but shunning the social reality leads to breakaway of literature and the mass's life after the wave of pursuance of politics, culture and language. As the heir of the tradition of realism, the novel on the unprivileged grassroots re-establishes the relationship between literature and reality and makes the lonely literary world restored, which embodies the law of literature. This essay summarizes the different opinions of the current academic circle and critics over the issues about the unprivileged grassroots and unfolds on the basis of such theory.Part II is the emphasis of this essay and is about the values of current novels about the unprivileged grassroots. It unfolds from four aspects: firstly, this essay elaborates on the demonstration of the living situation of the unprivileged grassroots by such novels. The living situation of the unprivileged grassroots is the main content of novels on the unprivileged grassroots. Starting with the text of novel on the unprivileged grassroots, this essay explains the life difficulty they face, living pressure they endure and physical harm and insult to their self-esteem. More importantly, such novels write about their persistence and optimism in face of poverty. This essay believes that the novels on the unprivileged grassroots display a living situation different from new realistic novels. They are not recount about trivia of an average person, not depressing and helpless expression of sadness, but more connected with the hard progress of socialist market economy and pain of social reform, avoiding the drawbacks like plain recount and deviation from the spirit of the times. Secondly, this essay details on the special description of hardship in novels on the unprivileged grassroots. This essay believes that the novels on the unprivileged grassroots are not a declaration of hardship even through they depict the hardships of the unprivileged grassroots in many angles. Their concern over and observing of hardship is not out of the superiority based on dominance and not pity and overlook rooted out of the superiority, but concern over the living condition wrapped in the reality of the unprivileged grassroots in the perspective of human equality. When directly dwelling on the inner grief and sadness of humanity and demonstrating the misfortune and embarrassment of the existence of life, these works are not merely declaration of hardship by direct emphasis on force, but description of the certain person(s) in hardship on the basis of equality in the perspective of human dignity. They depict the uplift and toughness of the life of the unprivileged grassroots so as to make them see the hope of life. Thirdly, this essay analyzes the characterization of group in novels on the unprivileged grassroots. Novels on the unprivileged grassroots show concern to not just individuals but the unprivileged group in the whole society. They reflect on the society and times through personalized description and return to the fate of the person himself. This essay summarizes three types of images of the current unprivileged grassroots. They share the common points– threaten living, hard life and unprivileged in spite of different sufferings and misfortunes for different group. The meaning of novels on unprivileged grassroots not only lies in the fact they have portrayed many typical persons with different personality and time spirit adding to new roles to the gallery of contemporary literature, but also their characterization is out of the humanization free of political, ideological and cultural restrictions. The novels on the unprivileged grassroots provide a new perspective of the unprivileged grassroots under the condition that current literature is becoming more aristocratic and for fewer people and losing widespread humane concern. Fourthly, this essay digs out the sense of human nature and humane concern in the creation of novels on unprivileged grassroots. Emphasis on human nature is characteristic of the novels on unprivileged grassroots. Novels on unprivileged grassroots stress comprehensive analysis of the human nature of unprivileged grassroots in exposing their life and portraying them, good or evil, which makes a human portrayed vividly. The concern of novels on unprivileged grassroots over people is combined with the humane concern of the writers and reflects on the literature conscience and social responsibilities of current intellectuals in social science.Part III tries to disclose the immediate meaning and limitations of novels on unprivileged grassroots for the time being, expecting them to develop toward a healthy direction. Writing novels on the unprivileged grassroots is socially meaningful to the extent that it shows concern to the reality, life and social focuses and is literarily meaningful for it gets literary creation out of the narrow choice of subjects and propels it pay attention to the grief, happiness, departure and unity and makes literature revives. At the same time, there are some unsatisfactory points with the creation of such novels. This essay ends with the discussion as to overlapping of hardship and hiding of truth as an expectation for enlightenment for latter creation of such novels.