Interpreting Absurdity, Carrying Hope

The 20th century is a revolutionary era; the revolution and rebellion are two key subjects of the 20th century literature. Different characters interpret the meaning of the revolution in different ways. From May 1926 to May 1928, the great revolution started off with a bang but suffered a tragic circumstance, and then rekindled the spark. The Eclipse, wrote by the modern Chinese famous writer Mao Dun in the latter part of the 20th century, is a true reflection of this revolution and it has become one of the most important novels of the modern Chinese literature since the 1917 revolution. Coincidently, a famous French writer, politician, Andrea Malraux also published La Condition Humaine in 1933, expressing the revolution. Andrea took the Chinese revolution in 1927 as the background and the workers'uprising in Shanghai as the subject, expressing his concern as well as deep sympathy to the Chinese people.Eclipse and La Condition Humaine, wrote by the two famous writers from two different countries, embodied their consideration and attention to the great revolution. The paper will take this as the point to discuss the different but similar ideas as well as expressions towards revolution in their own works from the comparative perspective. At the same time, the paper will make an intensive study of the characters'and the author's dissimilar attitudes to the revolution and the consideration of people's fate under the banner of the revolution from a philosophical standpoint.The paper consists of five parts: introduction, rescue and destruction, rebellion and absurdity, life consciousness in revolutionary era and the conclusion.The first part of the paper will explain the reason and the meaning of the title selection, aiming at introducing the current situation of the research and finding the scope and providing theoretical support for the study as well as achieving innovation on the areas of method, perspective and content.The second and the third part are the core of the paper. The second part will be discussed from the rescue and destruction. The objection of revolution is to rescue, that is to say, revolution is to save yourself as well as others. However, the process of rescue always brought about destructive effect, such as death and the persecution to female from male who master the revolution. The reasons are the coexistence of the revolution and the reactionary and the close relationship between revolution and violence.The third part starts with rebellion and absurdity. It reviews the life situation of the two writers in the first place and turns out they both lived a life with great absurdity. Therefore, for the purpose of reflecting the reality and exploring the objection, the writers take to create the characters who carry out various ways to resist, but just like the old saying goes,"All rivers run to the sea."The rebellion finally returns to the absurd situation. Only the reunification is more optimistic and of higher level of absurdity, leading to an optimistic failure.On the basis of the above explanation, the fourth part of the paper will compare and analyze different ideas of the destiny of mankind of Mao Dun and Malraux under the banner of revolution, so as to move to the thinking of the modernity of revolution. In Eclipse and La Condition Humaine, the characters resists revolution via various methods in that age but ultimately fails. The two works reveals authors'different point of view towards destiny through calm narration. Mao Dun expresses the irresistible feature of fate in the circle of oscillation, pursuit and disillusionment, but finally forms the view of fate which differs from Malraux's under the guidance of the north Europe goddess: revolution is to be alive, the fate of mankind should not be decided by disasters or death, time is not the master, the past is past, people can choose now, even the future. But Malraux considers revolution as a means of resisting absurdity, and he also regards active death as the paramount form of anti-fate.The last part is the conclusion. This part reviews and clarifies the life consciousness in the 20th century under the banner of the revolution. Malraux resists absurdity by revolution to rescue people and finally takes active death as a sign of victory. However, Mao Dun takes revolution as a method to change the society and rescue our country and expresses his idea that revolution is to be alive. In short, the basic view of this paper is that we should pay attention to the survival of the individual life as well as concerning about and respecting the existence of individual in the process of revolution.