Fangfang Novel Mundane Life Tragedy

The new literary era cannot ignore Fang Fang, who entered the profession of letters with her caravan in 1982 and became known in 1987 for her writing Scenery. As a representative of the New Realism, she mostly dwells on the daily lives of ordinary people, depicting objectively the evil and ugliness of life, thus presenting to the readers scenes after scenes of the life tragedies of common people. This paper aims at viewing those tragedies in Fang Fang's novels from all possible angles.Besides the preface and the conclusion, the body of this paper has three parts. In the preface, tragedy, as is adopted in this paper, is defined and a new point is advanced that Fang Fang's personal experience, interacting with her writing mode, has led to her deep concern of common people's life tragedies.The body of this paper explains those"life tragedies"from three aspects. The first part: Mediocre tragedies. The figures in Fang Fang's novels are, without any doubt, sufferers, who are thrown out of the paradise and have to bear everything that common people will confront. Unveiling the hard existing condition of those lower city dwellers---- due to the lack of material things, human beings'dignity, passions, morals, and humanity are challenged and destroyed----- she signed in lamentation over the hardship of living. Overthrowing the traditional description of love as pure and beautiful, she reveals love as victim of the right of survival, as a tool for games and revenge, thus singing an elegy for love. Focusing on the the fate of those three generations of intellectuals whose dreams are doomed to blast, she explores the unbearable hardship they have gone through over the years. Hence, mediocre tragedy, with its truthfulness and universality, dawns upon the readers of their own living conditions and transmits them a profound feeling of loneliness and desolation.The second part: surmounting plights. The protagonists in her tragical novels show different attitudes to the falling of disasters. Whichever way they adopt, the fighting spirit exists more or less in those protagonists. Some struggle severely, ending in dying out together with the disaster itself but at the same time winning their independence of personality and eternity of spirit; some succumb easily by drowning themselves in the evil and ugliness of reality, only to find themselves rise in their careers but fall in their personalities; others compromise with disasters, endeavoring to bridge the gap between their personal desires and social surroundings, on the loss of their individuality , personality and emotions. The way they adopt can't inspire the feeling of heroism and sublimity. Comparing to west classical tragedies, the protagonists'struggles are common people's struggles.The third part: exploring the sources. While depicting the hardships of living, Fang Fang spares no efforts to search for the decisive factors that lead to the protagonists'fate. Conflict, as a major element in novels, is used as a critical factor in her writings. Generally, the conflict can be summed up into three kinds: 1. conflict between a person and its surroundings. Surroundings with its super conditionality, could disable any member in it; 2. conflict between persons or between a person and himself. Others, or even the inflation of the irrational factors among a person may become sources of one's affliction; 3. conflict between a person and his fate. Life is full of contingency and uncertainty, therefore, the evil maybe laughing on the high ropes while the kind is weeping in the hell. In short, it is the above three factors or the combination of them all that make the life tragedies possible.In the conclusion, the paper sums up that Fang Fang's novels represent typically the writing mode of New Realism: originating from real life and showing life as what it is. But her novels are more than a mirror to the real life. With the author's criticism to social cultures ,her reflections on humanity and her pity and sympathy to the fate and luck of both individuals and groups, Fang Fang deviates a little from New Realism's wring principle—blank interposition and weakened value judgment. Yet it is this deviation that differentiates her from other writers.