The Study Of East Wind:West Wind From The Aspects Of The Third Space Theory

Pearl S. Buck is the first American woman who won the Nobel Prize for Literature and is honored as "a human bridge between Eastern and Western civilizations." As a marginalized person living between two cultures, Pearl S. Buck makes her efforts to achieve the integration of the Eastern and Western cultures throughout her life. East Wind: West Wind is Pearl S. Buck’s first novel and reflects her ideal about the cultural integration of the East and West.This thesis makes a study of Pearl S. Buck’s cultural views as reflected in her works. Through the study of Pearl Buck’s life experiences and her literary creations we know that Pearl S. Buck proposes and pursues a cultural third space throughout her life. This so called third space belongs neither to China nor to America, but has strong connection with the two. Her unique life experiences as well as her distress as a marginalized person who is not accepted by either of the two cultures prompts her to seek for a third space.There must be conflicts and collisions between different cultural backgrounds, but it does not mean that the native and the exotic cultures will always be in a binary opposition. This thesis analyses the "third space" formed through the process of cultural collision and mutual integration based on Homi Bhabha’s "third space" theory, as well as the reconstruction of hybrid cultural identity in this space. Living in the cracks of two cultures, Pearl S. Buck gradually adapts herself to the alienation of the two cultures and begins to seek for a way to achieve cultural integration, and try to establish the unique cultural identity of her own.