Research On The Relationship Between The Migrant Worker Novels And Author’s Identity

Along with the rapid development of China’s modernization and industrialization,many young workers from the countryside have come to the cities in developed areassuch as the Pearl River Delta since the early1980s, and they became cheap labor andstarted the tough working life experience. The workers from the countryside are calledthe migrant workers in the academia.With the amount of the migrant workers increasing sharply, the migrant workerliterature which is reflecting the migrant workers’ working experiences springs up. Themigrant worker literature works are created by the migrant workers only at first, andthese works are mainly based on their real working experiences. In the21st century manyprofessional writers join to create the migrant worker literature works, so the migrantworker literature writers’ social identity includes the migrant worker writers and theprofessional writers, and the specific social identity differences have an important impacton the migrant worker literature.The migrant worker novel is the very important part of the migrant worker literature.This thesis studies on the migrant worker novels, mainly discusses the relationshipbetween the migrant worker novels and the author’s identity. The author’s identity is thebreakthrough of this thesis; this thesis is to analyze and compare the similarities anddifferences in the migrant worker novels that respectively created by the migrant workerwriters and professional writers, and the analysis and comparison will be put in the wholeChina’s new modern literature development to study the diaphragm between the china’smodern new literature writers and the social bottom group.There are six chapters besides the introduction and the conclusion in this thesis. Theintroduction compares the similarities and differences between the native-soil literatureand the migrant worker literature to outline the perspective view and theme of themigrant worker novels, and then combs the current research status and research weaknessof migrant worker novels’ research roughly from four sides.The first chapter is divided into three parts. The first part introduces the historicaltrend of China’s modernization after the reform and opening up, and explains the historical trend in the1980s from the perspectives of economic transition, socialtransformation and cultural transformation. The second part discusses the relationshipbetween popular culture and rapid development of market economy in the1990s, andanalyses the connotation, features, foundations, audience’s aesthetic taste anddelivery mechanism of the popular culture. The third part generally points out thespecific relationship between the migrant worker novels and the author’s identity, andstudies the causes, definition, features and different author’s social identity classificationsof the migrant worker literature.The second chapter starts from the same author’s identity that the migrant workerwriters and professional writers both have to discuss the relationship between theauthor’s standpoint, attitude and responsibility and the theme in the works, and thenexplains the same suffering theme writing in the migrant worker novels from thefollowing three aspects: hard surviving, spiritual predicament and identity anxiety in themigrant worker novels.The third chapter is from the perspective of the authors’ different social identities toanalyze the differences of narrative strategies in the migrant worker novels brought byauthor’s different social identities, and discusses the concrete differences from thefollowing three sides: the different subject matters caused by authors’ different lifeexperiences, the different narrative structures caused by authors’ different aestheticperceptions, the narrative perspectives caused by authors’ different novel rhetoric views.There are two parts in the fourth chapter, and this chapter is based on theidentity anxiety of the professional writers to discuss the reasons and limits of themigrant worker novels created by the professional writers. The first part discusses thereason why the professional writers create the migrant worker novels from the followingthree levels: the humanitarian spirit of the professional writers, the psychology reflectionof marginal man survival, the reusing of realistic creation. The second part discusses thediaphragms caused by the different author’s social identity in the works created byprofessional writers, and illustrates the diaphragms specifically, the below are the twodiaphragms: the rejection to migrant worker readers of implied reader in the novels, andthe alienation of migrant workers’ real life in the novel storylines.There are two parts in the fifth chapter, and this chapter is based on the paradox of identify of the migrant worker writers to discuss the value and defects of the migrantworker novels created by the migrant worker writers. The first part analyses the migrantworker novels’ great value created by the migrant worker writers from these followingtwo aspects: the folk standpoint and the original scene of the migrant workers’ lifeshowed in their works. The second part discusses the secularization trend caused bythe limits of migrant worker writers’ identity in their migrant worker novels, thefollowing two aspects are the secularization trend: the extreme populism and thesimplification of some characters in their novels.There are three parts in the sixth chapter, and this chapter is focused on the authors’self-identity to discuss authenticity of the social bottom group in the whole China’s newmodern literature, and then describes the discourse dilemmas of bottom writing workscreated by all kinds of the social identity writers. The first part discusses diaphragmbetween the enlighteners’ attitude of intellectual-writers and the thoughts of the socialbottom group. The second part focuses on the worker-peasant-soldier directionestablished by Talks at the Yanan Forum on Literature and Art, so as to state the rethinksof Mao Tse-tung to the relationship between subjects and objects in the new literaturedevelopment process, then take the identity and creation of Zhao Shuli for instance toexpound the value and limits to the popularization of new literature brought by theworker-peasant-soldier direction. The third part discusses the change of the migrantworker writers’ identity and the effects on migrant worker literature as the result of thischange; in this part then take Wang Shiyue, Anzi and Zheng Xiaoqiong these threeoutstanding migrant worker writers as examples, so as to explain the discourse dilemmaresulted by the change of the migrant worker writers’ identity.The conclusion summarizes that the social bottom group is invisible in the wholeChina’s new modern literature, then points out it is the result of the contradictionmovement between modernity and nationality of China’s modern new literature, andmodernity and nationality should be coordinated positively.