The Yell Of Human Nature Vs. The Call Of God

Religion had been the most important component of Western culture, and a rooted faith and reliance to the Western people before Friedrich Nietzsche declared"God is dead"in the last century. The novel Brideshead Revisited is also another way to preach God's grace, just as Evelyn Waugh said in the preface that its theme is about"the operation of divine grace on a group of diverse but closely connected characters". In addition to the story plot and the characters'words, the narrative space is also closely related to the silent picture of invisible but powerful God's will. Ground-floor Rooms, Meadow Building, Venice, Brideshead, the ship in the Atlantic, and the Continent all have their own significance in the novel.Compared with God's heaven from above, the space signifying human nature, freedom and love, seems to be relatively open and low. And these low or high, open or closed spaces will necessarily contribute to the construction of the mental space. In a sense, therefore, the meaning of a certain space differs from individual to individual. For example, the church for religious people is somewhere sacred while it might look the same with other spaces for ordinary people because they do not realize their sins. And"his sin is the wrong use of his freedom and its consequent destruction"(Niebuhr, 1996:16).When people came into the 20th century, they felt much alienated and faced an unprecedented crisis of faith. Social changes, the industrial development and the two Great Wars imposed enormous pressure on people. Where were they going? That's a question many writers and scholars at that time were forced to ponder.