| The Thorn Birds was published in1977, and it was the dedicated work of the contemporaryAustralian female writer Colleen McCullough (1937-). It became an immediate success rightafter its first publication, and it also was one of the most bestsellers in the world. The ThornBirds is a saga novel, and it sets its background in Drogheda, a vast sheep station which fills thetypical Australian color, and it tells a beautiful story about love and fate. After reviewing thepresent study situation of The Thorn Birds, it can be found that, most of the studies are from theperfective of feminism, the themes and the writing techniques of the novel. However, throughanalyzing its contents, characters and structure, it can be found that this novel corresponds to thefeatures of Bildungsroman, and it can be interpreted as a Bildungsroman.The Thorn Birds is a diligent work of Colleen McCullough. From the aspect of its content,first of all, it was full of the color of autobiography, and most of the characters in this novel werewritten by the prototypes of her families. The real life experiences and the identity of being adescendant of Irish helped her a lot in writing this novel, and made it loved by the readers for itsfluent and moving. Secondly, it contained a series of initiation courses of the heroine Meggieturned to be a mature woman from an innocent and na ve girl. To pursue her love and happiness,she bravely rebelled against fate, broke the traditional marriage, and challenge God, throughwhich she was crying out her own voice. From the aspect of characters, it mainly contained theinitiation guides and companions, who influenced the initiation of the heroine. Among theinitiation guides, it can be divided into the positive guides and the negative guides. In this novel,the positive guides were Frank, Ralph and Anne. Frank was a companion-like guide, Ralph wasnearly a perfect guide either in knowledge or in morality, Anne could be considered as apasserby-like guide in the journey of Meggie’s initiation, and all of them comforted and helpedher when she was lonely and helpless. The negative guides were Fee and Luke, and Fee wasMeggie’s mother, who provided her the frame of reference of the opposite. Luke was Meggie’shusband, and he can be considered as a Satan-like guide, who married her just for her money butwould not like to give her a stable home, and left her alone in a strange place to experience kindsof tests and hardships. From the aspect of its structure, firstly, it contained the specific plotpattern of Bildungsroman: innocence, temptation, leaving, tests, bewilderment, epiphany, loss ofinnocence, and realization of self and life. This was not only an imitation of the original initiationrites, but also was a copy of the common growing experiences of humankind. Secondly,compared to the close-ending of the traditional novel, it was open-ending. Although time forDrogheda was going to stop, Justine as the hope of the Cleary family was going to settle down inEurope with her beloved man. She also gained the cherish things that her mother and grandmother did not possess all through their lives, such as, the position as equal as man, thesuccessful career, the happy love and marriage. Thirdly, it adopted the omniscient third-personpoint of view, which was easier for the readers to learn about the plots in detail and to feel theinner feelings of each character. Thus it can be concluded that, The Thorn Birds is not only anovel of feminism, but also is a Bildungsroman. It tells a series of initiation courses of theheroine Meggie, turning to mature from innocence, and a moving story of rebelling against fateand God. Therefore, it can be considered as a Bildungsroman to interpret and study.This thesis is going to discuss how this novel uses Bildungsroman, a special genre of novel,to show the initiation of the heroine. There are six parts of this thesis:The first part is introduction, which briefly introduces the life experiences and the majorworks of the author, the main plot of The Thorn Birds, and the significance and the structure ofthe study.Chapter one is literature review, first of all, it gives a brief introduction of Bildungsroman,including the origin, the definition, the development and the features of Bildungsroman, and italso reviews the present situation of the studies on Bildungsroman and The Thorn Birds on thewhole. Through the literature review, it is found that in the present studies, no one has analyzedthe initiation of the heroin Meggie from the perspective of Bildungsroman, and it provides abreach to this thesis. And based on these elements, it is found that The Thorn Birds correspondsto the features of Bildungsroman, and it can be interpreted as a Bildungsroman. Initiation is aneternal literary theme, and Bildungsroman, as a special genre of novel, plays a rather importantrole in the history of Western literature, and it has a long writing tradition.Chapter two analyzes the content of this novel. The novel is filled with the rich color ofautobiography, for it contains numerous elements of the author’s life experiences, and most ofthe characters in this novel are written by the prototypes of her families. It analyzes the initiationof the heroine Meggie, and her rebellions against fate, traditional marriage and God, whichdisplays her physical and psychological developments.Chapter three mainly analyzes the major characters, who play an important role in theinitiation of the heroine, including the positive initiation guides, the negative initiation guides,and the initiation companions. Everyone’s initiation has to be influenced by others, who canenrich the protagonist’s life experiences and acknowledge to society from both positive andnegative aspects.Chapter four analyzes the structure of this novel, including the formulated plot pattern, theopen-ending and the narrative point of view. Its plots follow the pattern of Bildungsroman:innocence, temptation, leaving, tests, bewilderment, epiphany, loss of innocence, and realizationof self and life. The end of the novel is open, and compared to the traditional close-ending, it is freer and more penetrating. This novel adopts the omniscient third-person point of view, and thenarrator can see through the heart of each character, and explain or comment on all the charactersand events. However, it usually lacks the suspense, and reduces the interests of readers, so, tomake up this disadvantage, the inner thoughts and dialogues of the characters are added into thenovel.The last part is conclusion, which summarizes the survey of the ideas of this thesis, thesignificance and the limitations of the research, and the trend of the further study. Based on whatis discussed above, The Thorn Birds can be considered as a Bildungsroman, a special genre ofnovel, which provides a new theory to interpret this novel, and supplies a gap in the studies of it.However, this thesis has its limitation, for it mainly analyzes this novel from content, charactersand structure, and it does not display in detail the inheritances or transcendences to thetraditional Bildungsroman. And being limited by the language level and academic level of theresearcher, this thesis is not profound and rigorous. In the future, it is hoped that more studies onthis novel will be done and more understandings or interpretations of it will be explored. |
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