From Growth To Destruction

Where there are one thousand readers, there are one thousand Hamlets. It is the same to Lao She's Rickshaw Boy. As for this novel, critics have made various studies from the perspective of realism, social criticism, discourse structure narrative style etc. From the point of Bildungsroman, this thesis introduces the protagonist's experience of struggling for his dreams and the final failure, and analyzes the living environment and social background which make him desperate and result in his ultimate tragic fate. Through the analysis, this thesis tries to demonstrate that there is no hope for those laboring people living at the bottom of the society to achieve their personal development and growth. Thus, readers are able to get deep understanding of the connotation and significance of Rickshaw Boy.This thesis consists of six parts. The first part is the introduction, giving a brief explanation of the Bildungsroman which has a long history and established itself as an irreplaceable literary tradition and creation mode which plays a quite important role in western literature. The Bildungsroman has its own esthetics significances and academic value for existence. It helps to interpret Chinese literary works from the perspective of Bildungsroman. It can be found from the current study of Rickshaw Boy that few people have made any research in this perspective. By employing the method of illustrative study, this thesis tries to analyze this novel from this new perspective, and get a new understanding and a new vision. The second part is about the birth and development of Bildungsroman, introducing the tradition of this form of novel and paving the way for the following analysis. The third part describes the protagonist's changes in appearance and personality by analyzing the struggle between his "inner self and the "external environment", which proves that Rickshaw Boy is completely in accordance with the mode and definition of Bildungsroman. The fourth part analyzes the protagonist's growth in four aspects:the protagonist's innocence and pursuit, hard work and resistance, confusion and lost, failure and destruction. The fifth part describes the external and internal factors that results in the protagonist's failure, emphasizing that the external social background is the main cause. By explaining the external and internal factors, this thesis demonstrates the theme of failure in growth in this novel. The sixth part is the conclusion, reproducing the protagonist's change from growth to destruction and trying to awake readers to think about the major cause of his failure. This thesis analyzes Rickshaw Boy from the perspective of Bildungsroman, enabling readers to get a deeper understanding of its tragic characteristics. From the protagonist's growth and change, readers can draw the conclusion that the development and change of a person cannot be separated from the change of social background; on the contrary, a society with fairness and justice benefits the individual's development, which is also the practical significance of Rickshaw Boy.