The Thorn Birds And Holy Bible Archetype

The thorn birds is writed by famous Australian woman writer Colleen McCullough, which attract much attention and interest from readers and critics. Researchers in different times have put forward various ideas and interpretation from multiple angles, such as religion and humanity, symbolic interpretation, feminist approach, moral themes. Some scholars have also begun to examine the themes and characters in this work from Mythical archetypes criticism theory. But there still does not have any article which carry on comprehensive and system prototype analysis to the novel. We could not neglect the influence of The Holy Bible, if we neglected the influence, the analysis of The thorn birds is not comprehensive. Therefore this article will utilizes The Mythical archetypal criticism, analyze some typical archetypes in The thorn birds which include archetypes related to The Holy Bible. This article divides into three chapters. The first chapter, introduce the writer, the creation background, the novel and the Mythical archetypal criticism of Northrop Frye. The second chapter, analyze The Holy Bible archetype in the novel from three parts: character, the environment background and narrative structure. The first section, analyze Holy Bible archetypal in the character. The hero in novel correspond with archetype of The Holy Bible. Ralph and Maggie are just the incarnation of Adam and Eve. Mary Casson and the devil Satan, Dion and the Christ prototype, the franker and the scapegoat prototype also have many similarities. The second section, analyze the archetypal related to The Holy Bible in environment background and narrative structure. The three chapter, analyze the innovation and understanding of author when she use The Holy Bible archetypal, mainly from the original sin subject, expiation subject and rebirth subject. The first section, analyze the author discussion about original sin subject. In The Holy Bible, the beginning of humanity degenerate start from Adam and Eve steals the forbidden fruit. The author reappears pardoned crime story of Holy Bible in the novel, on the one hand exhibited humanity's evil on the other hand also exhibited the understanding and attention about human nature. The second section, analyze the author explanation about the expiation subject .The expiation subject of Holy Bible is accept the tribulation life, in The Thorn Birds, the most important part of expiation subject is accept the misery on one's own initiative. The third section, analyzes the author exploration about the rebirth subject. Under the modern cultural context, the author thinks only maintains the harmony and the equal relations between male and female, the humanity can seek the road of rebirth.