An Analysis Of Jade King: History Of A Chinese Muslim Family From The Angle Of Love And Sacrifice

Love falls into two categories: one is to moisten each other with their damp and spittle and the other is to forget themselves in their native rivers and lakes, in other words, to be together in humble circumstances and to forget each other for more freedom. For a long time, to be together in humble circumstances exemplifies the most prominent form of marriage. From the writer's peculiar ethnic perspective, Jade King: History of a Chinese Muslim family tells an emotional story involving three generations, which is also permeated with histoy and folk customs. The novel illustrates two forms of love but extends further.In recent years, many of the relevant research and comments focus on the historicity , nationality and women in the novel. Of course, there are a great number of essays revolving around love. However, few people attempt to make a meticulous study of evolutionary process of the love tragedy from the angle of sacrifice. Therefore, this paper adopts this perspective, analyzing the causes and revealing the connotation of three main types of love , which are associated with three types of sacrifice. Besides, the paper lists the contradictions between love and morality, love and freedom, and love and responsibility, and demonstrates the tough decisions between to be together in humble circumstances and to forget each other for more freedom. Furtehrmore , this paper is distinguished with its focus on the the minor character, ChuYanchao.The paper includes three chapters, love out of responsibility, love out of personality and love out of devotion. It also illustrates the specific forms of three types of love, analyzes the causes and explicates the sacrifice connotation of each type of love.The first part describes the necessity of love out of responsibility and the sacrifice implication of being together in humble circumstances. The marriage between HanZiJi and LiangJunBi constitutes the ideal and harmonious marriage. However, it does not follow that there exists love in such marriages. The husband's contribution to the family, and the couple's devotion to the family are aimed to survive in this world. They have reached a tacit understanding for their respective purposes. The heroes'return to family is simply out of fulfilling responsibility and obligation, which helps to maintain a complete family and save a precarious family. It is considered love out of responsibility. This type of love is rendered possible through such jointed factors as the fondness of success, the surge of feelings, sudden realization of the sense of responsibility, and the repression of public morality. On the surface, this kind of love results in the return to the family, but it also indicates great sacrifice and huge costs. It has led to the emptiness, meaninglessness, and depression of family life, left misery to the later offsprings, repressed the happiness and pleasure that the children should be blessed with and caused them to sacrifice further and tolearate the cruel torture of feelings. HanZiqi's return to family is based on the sacrifice of another happy family. He abandonment of LiangBingYu makes him guilty all his life. He burdens himself with huge pcychological pressure and has been suffering from mental torment, which finally leads to the failure of his cause. His return to family has intended to preserve his cause and develop a successful career; however, his career comes to an end at last with his emotional entanglements.The second part focuses on the necessity of love out of personality, and the sacrifice implication of being apart from each other. LiangBingYu is an new and intellectual female image. Though depicted simply , she is an indispensable role in the novel. She is in love for three times. For each time, she starts with intense passion and ends with forlorn misery. Confronted with the cruel reality, she is fruitless and left painful and unforgetful. However, the repeated disillusionment of ideal love does not crush her, on the contrary, she grows more and more mature with each failure. The paper takes her miserable love and her love outlook as love out of personality. It reveals modern new women's independence and struggle spirit, thus it is also called the love of struggle. LiangBingYu displays her awareness as a human being and as a female. Love out of personality is inevitable, which is why it is transcient, solemn and stirring. Independent, brave and strong personality forms the foundation ; the influence of modern culture, the development of female personality in the new age is an indispensable condition; the failure of ideal love and successive emotional wounds are a great impetus to the love out of personality. In the meanwhile, the westernized way of life provides the breeding ground for it. The life outlook of having the right to live and love encourages and promotes her to make bold decisions. In addition, the conflict between her concept of family and that of Han Ziqi forces her to leave. Although she givesup love, no one can do completely away from the hubbub of life, and she can not part with the maternal love for her daughter, therefore, for years she has been hesitating on whether she should set up a new family or not. She chooses to retreat from love so that she drifts alone for three decades, during which she makes huge and deplorable and sacrifice, such as the failure of love affairs , the loss of true love, the alienation of sisters and discrete mother and daughter relationship. All these lead to her loneliness and helplessness.In the negotiation between love and family, neither is the ultimate winner.Third part concentrates on the inevitability of devoted love and sacrifice implication of being alone. Among all the research works on the novel, it seems that there is not much reseach on the character of Chu Yan Chao. Despite a minor character, he is vivily depicted in the novel. As one of the three classical heroes, he is an indispensable clue in the novel. This part interprets the love between Han Xinyue and Chu Yanchao from the perspective of the latter. Both adhere to their love, present a touching story , stage an emotional life–to- death tragedy. When Xinyue is lying on her sick bed or when they are separated by death, Chu Yanchao confronts great pressusre that teachers and students must not be in love , and mixed marriages between different religions is prohibited. He sacrifices his own happiness and future and sticks to the end, which saves the girl's soul and elevates his own soul as well. This paper considers his persistend and dedicated love in the long years as devoted love. The goodness of human nature, Chuchao's strong determined character, and his supremacy of ideal love enable devoted love to be inevitable. Chu Yan Chao dedicates his platonic love to his deceased lover, therefore, the tragic ending is self-evident, which is not only displayed in his "testing pit" in her funeral, in his paying a visit to her grave and playing music on every memorial day, but also in his spending his days in loneliness until the very end of his life. The sacrifice implication of being alone is solemm and compassionate. Chu Yan Chao is immersed in the meomory of his dead lover all his life, unable to extricate himself, spending the rest of his life in loneliness and silence. When he buries Xinyue, he is also finished. Ahough he possesses the aesthetic, pure and ideal love, he is also thrown into a distressing and tearful life. He has lost his individual happiness and future in the remembrance of his deceased lover.All the love stories in the novel are narrated in a bleak tone, ending up in tragedy, breaking our hearts, and touching us deeply. The fates of the characters switch between the sorrows and joys, and change with the environment, dismay and helpless. Humble love in unfavorable circumstances is envious but traumatic; pure love deriving from separation is stirring but painful; and bitter love out of being alone in this world is tearful but exhausting. Chooing one type of love means the loss of another one. A man has to give up true love, family, or freedom. In the novel, the writer is so indifferent that lovely people finally go to heaven, honorable men suffer a crushing defeat and poor people are severely tormented. Perhaps this is the desired effect of the writer. He sets an arena in the soul of each reader, and enables the characters to enter the readers'emotional world. Based on different emotional experiences, he renderes the readers to make their own decisions or choices between life and death, career and love, return and escape , hence expolores the value and significance of each choice.