An Analysis Of Animal Images In Gunter Grass' Works

Gunter Grass received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1999. His literature reflects some of the most fundamental subjects during the 20th century: people were hurt by the rule of Nazi in both body and spirit; people are living with hope and trying to be reconciled with the past. His literature evokes the fact that people want to deny and forget, it is the most realistic and significant thing.Grass is an prolific writer in several fields, such as novel, poem, essay, literary theory. His novel is the most famous. The study of his work has been a hot issue. However, the research of his work just starts in China. Grass has become more and more famous in the literary world, so it is more and more important for us to study him.Grass prefers using the animal for his novels'titles, such as Cat and Mouse, Dog Years, Flounder, The rat. Grass'literatures are full of images and profound meaning. The view of Narrative is very distinct. It is difficult for the readers to understand. The thesis mainly researches the profound meaning of animal images in the novels and discusses the value and the aesthetic features of the animal images to make people understand the literature. The comment of this thesis is mainly from the following aspects.Introduction: Describe Grass'life and literature briefly and evaluate his status in the literary history. Grasp the animal images in his work entirely.Chapter one: Cat and Mouse—the opposition and exchange between two characters. Take the novel Cat and Mouse for example in this chapter to interpret the images of Cat and Mouse. Cat appears repeatedly in the novel, it has deep Symbolic significance. It symbolizes Nazi, ideology, social atmosphere, school, family and so on. Mouse symbolizes the youth generation such as Marker. They lost themselves and headed for the doom under the Nazi culture taming. Chapter two: The watchdog in the dark Underworld—the image of dog in the novel of Dog Years. Take the novel Dog Years for example in this chapter to interpret the images of dogs. Dog appears repeatedly in the novel. It has been described as the Cerberus in the Underworld which is famous in the Greek mythology. Three generations of dogs are all brutal .They even assist Hitler to do bad things. German citizens followed and connived with the Nazi blind. Their loyal and devoted behave make them look like the black watchdog in the Dog Years.Chapter three: Flounder—a mysterious creation of multi-identity status. In this chapter we use the novel Flounder in the literature. The flounder comes from the fisherman and his wife which is one of the Grimms'fairytales. This image can be elaborated by several meanings, it could be God or Devil, may be reason, knowledge, revolution, even Human ancestors, snake and man.Chapter four: The prophet and survivors in Post-human time—the image of rat in The rat. Take the novel The rat for example in this chapter to interpret the images of the rat. The rat is the symbol of the human. The voice of the rat means human being begins to reflect about himself. The writer used an absurd technique to reveal a naked fact: human is doing damage to the world and will be responsible for the behavior.Chapter five: The source of the animal images in Grass'works. This chapter will discuss the social source and the writer's source of the reason why Gunter Grass likes writing with animal images.Conclusion: Sum up the full text and describe entirely the cultural connotation and the profound meaning.