A Comparative Study Of "Virtual Candle" And "Weeds"

This thesis intends to take "Virtual Candle" and "Weeds" for a comparative study based on their remarkable similarities at a spiritual level, especially the similarities in the embodiment of plight of being and their life philosophies, and attaches great attention to the "Human concern", particularly the self-exploration undertaken by Shen and Lu.The thesis is divided into three parts, the first one elaborates on the false, cruel, contradictory, tempting and meaningless world against that peculiar social background with an end to explore these two writers' concerns toward the sameness and difference of their existence crisis, spiritual crisis, and state of mind.The second part, the highlight of the thesis, expounds the self-exploration of these two writers and is further divided into three sections. The first section focuses on the self-awareness and self-discovery, based on the discussion of the "Country folk" and "In-between". The second section shifts to the self-analysis and even self-negation, for the extreme nervousness of the reality and the loss of spiritual world make them start to doubt, to negate and to analyze themselves, which results in the thinking on the whole society and human being. The last one involves in the self-growth and self-surpassing. The self-analyses and self-negations of the writers, as the constructive work, are beneficial to the whole world; thus, what we should concern is how the writers express their helplessness and their desperate resistance toward the world in a disguised and indirect way.The third part handles the artistic characteristics of these two essays, and mainly emphasizes the peculiar dreams or unique images employed by writers to demonstrate their thoughts and ideas.Therefore, what this thesis explores is how these two "Loners" or "Spiritual warriors" embark on a journey of self-selection, with the enlightenment from the discovery of the nature of a lonely individual. Moreover, they integrate their own lives with the whole humankind and society, and integrate the past and the future, which leads to a far-reaching thinking among human being.