A Comparative Study On Never Let Me Go And Doppelganger From The Perspective Of Tragic Aesthetics

Tragedy is one of the main themes in the world literature. So many excellent Ancient Greek tragedies showed that tragedy is derived from the struggle between human and the unknown outside world. In the process of struggle, the struggle consciousness and the lofty beauty of tragedy has been shown. Even though the tragic and ultimate death is inevitable, the struggling spirits of human being is reflected. When they face the tragedy and misfortune, the struggle process fully embodies the aesthetic value of tragedy, and then encourages and awakens people in the real world. This thesis tries to make a comparative study on the aesthetic significance of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go and Keigo Higashino’s Doppelganger and analyse the cultural factors of the two tragedies.This thesis is made up of three chapters besides the Introduction and the Conclusion.A brief introduction to Kazuo Ishiguro and Keigo Higashino’s literary achievements, the two texts and tragedy aesthetic theory employed in this thesis is made in the first part. In addition, the literature review of the two texts and the research methods used in this thesis and research significance of this thesis are described in this part.Chapter One mainly analyses the theories of tragic aesthetics, and further articulates the tragic consciousness, the essence and aesthetic characteristic of tragedy and tragic complex in Japanese literature.The second chapter analyses the Never Let Me Go and Doppelganger from three aspects: the struggling spirit of tragic life, the tragic conflicts and the tragic ending, and then further analyses the tragic aesthetic significance of the two texts.The third chapter centers on the cultural roots of the two tragic texts. This part firstly analyses how the aesthetics appreciation of tragic beauty in Japanese culture influence Ishiguro and Higashino, then analyses both the Japanese tradition and English localization of Kazuo Ishiguro,who is an immigrant novelist. And it further expounds the struggle against the Japanese tradition and creation of Keigo Higashino as a Japanese native novelist.The conclusion indicates that the comparative study of two novelists and the two texts from the perspective of tragic aesthetics could make us have a better understanding about the influence of cultural roots and culture travel in literature. This thesis discovers the two writers’ understanding of the humanity and their humanistic concern for human’s tragic fate. The clones in the two works have struggling spirits, and they also look forward to the free personality. The two works reflected that the two writers try to awaken humanity and glorify lives in different degrees and from different perspectives, and further embody the lofty beauty of tragedy.