The Father Image In The Contemporary Literature

Not a mere form of address with biological meaning, "father" also has abundantsocial and cultural connotations, and therefore plays an important role in literarynarration, so does it in the contemporary literature. Through analysis and research onthe image of "father" in modern literature, the interaction between shaping the imageof "father" in modern literature as history goes on and the cultural imagination.In the long history of human being, the over-fifty-year contemporary literature is astrivial as a drop in the ocean. However, it provides such a big variety of content,reflecting the change of power, social reforms and revolutions, and collisions betweenvarious trends of thoughts, that we can not take them all in with our eyes. The modernliterature, especially the New Era Literature, has been constrained and influenced byboth the oriental culture and the western culture. Time changes, social environmentalternates, and traditional Chinese culture differs from modern western culture invarious aspects, which all cast no little impact on creating the image of "father" in thecontemporary literature. "Father" has assumed different meaning in different period ofcontemporary literature. Literature, by enriching people's imagination about father,makes out and rewrites the "fathers".In the first part of this thesis, in the context of traditional Chinese culture as well asby referring to modern ideas in western culture, the author provides a descriptionabout different images of "father" in contemporary literature resulted from historicaltransformation, and explores the particular historical and cultural connotations of theimages of "father". In accordance with their characteristics, the author categorizes thecreation of the image of "father" into three periods: the period of exaggeration, theperiod of depreciation, and the period of renovation. In the first period, the "father"was created in Red Narrative Literature as a revolutionary and a embodiment ofauthority and ethics, a traditional image representing the laggard peasants, or areactionary dumped by time;in the second period, a depreciated "father" appeared inNarrative Nativist Literature, Avant-garde literature, and diversified individual literaryworks. Under the background of western culture, the "fathers" were tightly watched inmodernistic literary works. Cultural criticism on "father" with its mission ofenlightenment transformed into suspicion and excruciation on both enlightenment andhuman nature, as well as the pursuit of individual. In the period of renovation, mostliterary works put their emphasis on analyzing the ideal "father" constructed in theend of the century. In the modern obsession, after the panic of fatherless ordeal, theimage of "father" in literary works of this period, no matter whether it was the"father" in folklore, the "father" in some small village, or the back-to-like heroic"father", and whatever ideal "father" the traditional intellectuals expected for,registered a tendency to turn back to be a traditional human.The second part will transcend the time to dissect the rich and colorful "father"images in the contemporary literature in this transiting and multiple cultures existingage, so that we can observe the authors' motivations and intentions, acquaint with thetendency of father view, and detect the cultural connotation behind "father". From thatwe can see the construction and declining of political and spiritual authorities, that is,father stepping down from the shrine and thus the collapse of father's authority. Thesensation of father scrutiny and parricide is prevailing. From the changes of "father"images, we can also conclude that the above complex as well as mankind's sense ofself-scrutiny goes with the advancement of human beings, propelling civilization atthe same time. It is the absolute path we must take in the mankind progress andcivilization. In the jungle of desires, the traditional ethnic and convention of fathergeneration become the only barrier in the way to the paradise of individual freedom.Animal desire and human reason fight with each other inwardly. Consequently, therecame the amazement between moralities as well as the considerations on solving theconflict between desire and reason. In the calling for reconstruction of social order, inthe dialogue between west and east and in the perplexity of modernism at the sametime, the cultural reference of "father" images is undergoing subtle changes. There isno less returning of traditional culture in the construction of father images in modernsense among the works of contemporary writers. Meantime, they are confronted withnew perplex and choices how to keep a balance between traditional and modern fatherimages. The respect for individual value and thinking for relative moralist penetratethe considerations for ideal social order.In the contemporary China full of drastic changes in society, behind the repeatedrewritten father images lies the perplexity of writers. It is still a problem today how tocreate a father image. What sort of spiritual father do we really need? What kind ofhumanistic ideal do we need to construct? It is a problem not only to the developingcountry like China but also to mankind in the process of development. Thecontemporary Chinese writers and other writers all over the world are all attachinggreat importance to this universal topic of mankind.