A Study Of Pearl S.buck's The Good Earth From The Perspective Of Spatial Narrative

Pearl S.Buck was the first woman writer to achieve the reputation of the Nobel Prize for Literature in America.Her masterpiece The Good Earth is called “the epic of Chinese peasants” and displays the original appearance of the rural areas of China.This thesis uses Gabriel Zoran's spatial narrative theory to interpret The Good Earth,which explores the living conditions of the farmers at that time in China,their lifelong dependence and attachment to the land,and the process of the transformation of their mind.The thesis includes the introduction,the main body of three chapters and the conclusion.The introduction describes the life of Pearl,the story of The Good Earth,the literature review of home and abroad and the theory of spatial narrative.Chapter One discusses the three spaces from the topographical viewpoint.The rural space interprets the living surroundings and living conditions of the farmers represented by the protagnist of Wang Lung;the town space is the expansion of the rural space,aiming to highlight the intrinsic relation between farmers and the town;the city space contrasts with the rural and town space,emphasizing the shelter and hope that the city brings to the farmers.Chapter Two deals with the Social Space of the text from the synchronic,the diachronic and the historical levels.The synchronic level mainly analyzes the characters' relative movement and rest status in the three spaces and summarizes the characters' activities in a comprehensive way,so that the peasants' living conditions can be more clearly revealed;the diachronic level introduces Wang Lung's “cyclical”movement,the power and motive to promote it;the historical level discussing the different charcteristics and customs of different spaces and exploring the rising of modern civilization in the novel.Chapter Three analyzes the textual space from three aspects,the selectivity of language,the linearity of the text and perspective structure.Firstly,the selectivity oflanguage reflects the author's introduction of Wang Lung and O-Lan's characteristics both directly and indirectly;through the combination of space and time,the linearity of the text discusses the movement trajectory of the characters across spaces and stresses the continuity of the text;finally,through the analyzation from the third-person omniscient and limited perspective and the topic-juxtaposition,this part intends to make the readers have a better understanding of the text at the perspective structure.By analyzing and interpreting the content and structure through the three perspectives of topographical space,social space and textual space,it can be seen that the Chinese peasants at that time had a strong sense of dependence on land,however,with the changes of times,the peasants' ideology is changing slowly,and the traditional rural life is becoming civilized gradually.