Cultural Conflict And Individual Identification

The biographies of Pearl S. Buck (her biographies and autobiography) are an important part of her literary activities. This paper is an attempt to explore to theme of identification with three of her biographical works, THE EXILE (1921). FIGHTING ANGEL (1931) and her autobiography MY SEVERAL WORLDS(1953), as the research object. Due to the historical, political and cultural reasons, she and her parents always stayed in the embarrassing fringe between China and America, unaccepted by either of them. So they sought their own identity respectively within the space full of conflicts. Pearl S. Buck took cultural conflict as background in her biographical works and inquired the identity of each person in the family and society.The paper is divided into five parts, namely introduction, three chapters as the main body and the conclusion. In introduction, it reviewed the current research related to the Pearl S. Buck and explained the reasons and research value to choose these three biographical works. THE EXILE is the core of the first chapter, which explored the identity of Kelly in family and society in the aspects of Kelly’s attitude to God and God’s impact on her life, Kelly’s status in marriage as a Christian woman and the dual role of Kelly’s American cultural education in the Pearl’s growth. The second chapter is built around the FIGHTING ANGEL to analyze Andrew’s status in the Pearl S. Buck’s heart from an extraordinary angel living for God, Andrew’s attitude to Kelly before and after and the significance of Pearl due to Andrew’s dereliction of duty as a father. Focusing on Pearl Buck’s autobiography MY SEVERAL WORLDS and combining with the former two biographies, Meanwhile, her changes in thinking are also reflected in her literary works. Therefore, this paper demonstrated her psychological changes as well as her attitude and value orientation in dealing with cultural conflict through her literary works in different time, chapter Ⅲ analyzed how Pearl got self-identified progressively in the case of Sino-US cultural conflict in the multiple worlds. The conclusion revealed the organic connection of these three works.The paper argues that Pearl S. Buck showed herself through multiple sides by the parasitic biography of her parents, and her biography and autobiography integratedly foreshadowed the road of identification. The three works span a long time, so they clearly reflect the spiritual development of Pearl at different stages of in her life.