Comparative Research Of Border Town And Snow Country

Border Town and Snow Country are the representative works of Shen Congwen and Kawabata Yasunari respectively. And the two writers are both prominent novelists in their own countries. They have equal status in the literary world of their own countries, and also have similar literary ideas. They both insist on the independence of art creation. More importantly, the two works resemble each other:on the one hand, they two are both excellent enough to be rewarded by the Nobel Prize. On the other hand, they have similar length and theme. They both state sad but extremely beautiful stories happening in a remote area. All these contribute to the possible comparison of these two works. This paper makes a comparison of Border Town and Snow Country from the aspects of text background, character images, and artistic style. For the background of the two works, they were both finished in the1930s to1940s. But due to the different life experience and the resulted different temperaments, the two writers have different motivations and perspectives of narration. As to the character images, the leading roles of the two works have similarity, for instance, the old crew to Juzi, Cuicui to Yezi, mother to Xingnan etc. The old crew and Juzi are persistent people who both bear the heavy burden of life but will never surrender. But because of the different emphases the writers want to express, the two characters take very different positions in the two works. For the artistic style, readers can feel the beauty of the language and mood in both works, but differences can be found after careful study. In Border Town, we can feel the soft and smooth of water, while in Snow Country, we can feel the tranquility of snow. We will be sad about the beauty of Border Town, while the Snow Country gives us a feeling of tragic beauty. This is not only because of the different scenery described in the two novels, but also related to the variety of the cultural tradition between China and Japan accepted by the two writers. The comparison of Border Town and Snow Country not only helps us make a better understanding of the two works and two writers, but also contributes to some new findings of the literary value and contribution of the two writers so as to claim their status in the history of world literature.