The Research On Motifs In Zhou Daxin’s Novels

Zhou Daxin is a famous writer in contemporary Chinese literature. He has covered more than30years in writing since1980s of the20th century. From the publication of the first short novel The Letter from the War in1979to the publication of the long novel Comfort the Soul in2012,, Zhou Daxin has written ten novels, dozens of novellas and more than one hundred short novels. He has made attempts to all sorts of stories, which is from military novels to historical novels, from the vernacular novels to the metropolitan novels. Therefore, he also be labelled kinds of labels, such as army novelist, local novelist, urban novelists, family novelist and so on. However, these evaluations cannot analyze his story world accurately. At present, most commentators focus attention to Zhou Daxin’s works on the folk-custom characteristics, traditional region characteristics and characters of his fiction. Thus, the paper will attempt to break through the framework for study. The author will interpret the motifs in Zhou Daxin’s novels from his novel texts, and enrich the study on Zhou Daxin’s novels.This paper will be divided into seven parts, the introduction, five chapters and the conclusion:The introduction expounds the significance and the value of the paper. It introduces the research methods of the paper and the academic research status of Zhou Daxin’s novels.The first chapter analyzes Zhou Daxin’s novels as a whole. This chapter will analyze Zhou Daxin’s novels through his three different writing stages which include military novels, vernacular novels and the metropolitan novels, and the humanistic spirit always presented in his novels.The second chapter focuses on the analysis of the motif theory. This chapter starts with the concept of motif, and systemizes the definition of the motif and the motif’s traits by adopt the way of going back to its roots. At the same time, the author divides the literary motifs recurred in Zhou Daxin’s novels into three categories, which are revenge motif, escape motif and pursuit motif.The third chapter analyses the revenge motif. This chapter mainly revolves the revenge narration to interpret the revenge motif in Zhou Daxin’s novels from the blood revenge, love revenge and dignity revenge. It also presents Zhou Daxin’s critical consciousness for the backward ideas in his hometown and his respect for humanity. The fourth chapter analyses the escape motif. This part illustrates the concept of escape, and analyses the background that the hero escape from their hometown on the basis of Zhou Daxin’s several important works. What’s more, this part analyses the predicament which make the heroes escape frome their hometown, and the reason why they return their hometown after escape. It also expresses Zhou Daxin’s care for the human condition in-depth.The fifth chapter analyses the pursuit motif. This chapter will explore the pursuit motif in Zhou Daxin’s novels mainly from the material pursuit and the spiritual pursuit, and then make a further analysis the heroes’ anxiety and hope which produced during the process of pursuit. What’s more, it elaborates the writer’s pursuit to the traditional values and the hope for nice humanity.The conclusion will make a simple evaluation to the thesis and summarize the main idea of the whole paper, and then restate the motifs in Zhou Daxin’s novel, which reflect the ideological connotation and humanistic care in his work.