Two Kinds Of Folk Forms: On "Red Sorghum Family" And "Sea God 's Family"

Since the publication of Red Sorghum,"folk" has typically characterized works of Yan Mo, The nutrition from the spirit of north-east country of Gaomi, irrigates his works and makes the earthly folk vitality firmly anchored in Red Sorghum, the righteous ardour of people, the wildness of earth focused reader’s sights into Red Sorghum. As author’s honor to his hometown,"Roots Seeking" is also the main point of Red Sorghum.The Goddess of the Sea was published in2004, and similar to Red Sorghum, this book also follows the same narrative model, tells a story of the third generation of a family, returned their hometown after long times of floating in the outside world, they contemplate the land where they were born and belong, trace back the history of the family. There is an overlapped time quantum in these two works, the1930s-1940s, a wartime with invasion of Japan and a time full of turmoil. The mainland and Taiwan was separated by Taiwan Strait, and were in different political environments, but both of them were suffering from the foreign invasions, people of both sides had to find their rule of living and followed the rule of time. Red Sorghum and The Goddess of the Sea share the motif of folk life and background of homeland, and they both reveal the living situation of people in that time. We may have a specialized view to take a look at the human relationship between people and earth within the macro-atmosphere from these two books.This thesis aims to analyze Red Sorghum and The Goddess of the Sea from a perspective of Literary and Art Folklore, to study the folk life parts of these two books, to reveal the same living way of people in both sides, with a particular focus on their relationship with their hometown, and to discuss the value of life, human and earth.The first chapter contains three parts, definition of "folk" in this thesis, brief introduction of The Goddess of the Sea and Red Sorghum, and literature review.The Second chapter discuss the relationship between human and earth of these two texts, reveals the characters’longing for affection to their homeland, and their nostalgia sensation of seeking roots, and proves that the root of human is earth, body may be separated from home though, soul and spirit would never stop the interaction with home.The third chapter discuss the life of Red Sorghum and The Goddess of the Sea, especially pay attention to characters’attitude towards life and death when facing up to a war, their struggling in family revenge, country hate, and personal life and death, author’s description of the colorful vitality and pale death is the kernel point of this chapter.Both of the Red Sorghum and The Goddess of the Sea have a vivid, meticulous description of woman, the fourth chapter analyzes the woman image and attitude toward the social actant—mother in these two texts.Although Red Sorghum and The Goddess of the Sea belongs to works of two sides, mainland and Taiwan, authors of two gender, male and female, they happen to coincide to take the same time as background, to take the seeking for family history as the same motif, and to contain the folk life and folk culture as important component elements; our analysis would find out the aspects of contemporary folk lives by a comparative study of these two texts.