A Study On The 《Tears Over Douman River》

Torturous Years, Tears Over Douman River, and Jiandao Legend, are the novels with the common materials from Korean immigrants, based on the common consciousness of language, history and realism. But owing to the different social background of the authors, Tears Over Douman River is different from the other two novels when it comes to the creation of theme, characters and contradiction, and practical consciousness. The thesis intended to study the differences between them, based on the historicism and theory of literary sociology, combining with the theory of post-colonialism and folklore, and to discuss in detail the narrative direction, ideological choice and the reproduction of traditional folklore of Tears Over Douman River.First, the narrative direction of Tears Over Douman River appeared to put love conflicts in the center of theme, cutting off a number of emergent and sensitive historical matters, but from the bottom it reflected the true national conflicts and class conflicts.Second, the author of the novel, Cui Hongyi, in a post-ideological way, intentionally shut off the historical times and facts. Therefore the times are limited from the end of 19th century to 1910s, during which the Korean immigrants cultivated the land and built up their new hometown. The novel ran through the viewpoint of national culture, national psychology and folklore, focusing on the excavation of desire for true life and sub-consciousness.Third, the author got freed from the ideology to weaken the historical and practical features, and strived to "search for national roots", cutting off historical reality. The effort to "search for national roots" is made describing national folklore and its language.To sum up, Tears Over Douman River has not put directly forward the resistance against Japanese invaders, and the local landowners'tyrannizing immigrants, and conflicts between them as well. The novel is more concerned about the Korean immigrants in Jinadao area, and by describing Korean public feelings, folklore and culture, struggled to search for national identity. The national identity is not to reject the others, but is reserved by inherent Korean culture which leaded to national liberation and development afterwards. Therefore, the novel is a narration of "watching for national identity".