Motif Study On The Red Sorghum

Recently, scholars and experts have achieved fruitful results on academic research of Mo Yan’s works. These results include its theme, the folk standpoint, history space, the artistic characteristics, and the characters’ symbolic significance from the spiritual and national perspective. There are also plenty of graduates and post-graduates who analyzed Mo Yan’s novels with methods of linguistics, narratology, and comparative literature. Motif study in fields of myths and legends, folk tales is fruitful, and many researchers tried their hands on ancient fiction, drama, but no one has ever tried it in area of contemporary fiction. In view of this, the essay aims to use motif to interpret “Red Sorghum”. It is hoped that more experts and scholars would study contemporary fictions from perspective of motif.The first chapter of this paper gives a brief introduction to the construction of Mo Yan’s “Northeast Gaomi township” literary Kingdom, and present research status of Mo Yan’s works both at home and abroad.Motif contains cultural factors. In Red Sorghum, the author depicts the disappearance of Uncle Arhat’s corpse, the deiform red sorghum and the Moshui River, the customs of “sedan chair shake” and “wail at funeral”. The second chapter discussed the general motifs embodied in “disappearance of corpse”, “phantom”, “homeland”, and “customs”.The third chapter focuses on three typical motifs: “hero”, “royal servant”, and “revenge”. Under the “revenge” motif, men from “Northeast Gaomi township” showed their unyielding masculine image. This part analyzed the basic manifestation and literary heritage of literary motifs in Red Sorghum in details.The last chapter aims to explore the literary significance behind the motifs in Red Sorghum. Through motifs of “hero” and “royal servant”, the author modeled vivid and living characters, and awakened the collective consciousness of nongovernment Anti-Japanese War. “Revenge” motif is the principal line of the plot, and the motif factors of “hero saves beauty”, “killing the Uncle” and “fighting against the Japanese invaders” are the three cornerstones of constructing story plot.