Image Of The Colonizers In Red Brazil

Red Brazil is the masterpiece of Jean-Christophe Rufin,the youngest French academician.In this novel,he tells an extraordinary unfamiliar episode of ??century:the first conquest of Brazil by the French,under the leadership of a knight of Malta Villegagnon.The novel is awarded the Prix Goncourt in 2001 and enjoyed great success among the public.Despite the success,research on Red Brazil is rare both abroad and in China.The title“popular novel”attributed to it could be a reason and the fact that the colonial novels studies mainly focused on Anglophone works could be another explanation.However,the lack of studies does not mean it does not deserve,but leaves us enough space for interpretation.This thesis seeks to analyze the colonizers' image in Red Brazil.It is not difficult to find three binary oppositions in the minds of the colonizers:European/Indian,Man/Woman,Human/Nature.It is through these three binary oppositions that the colonizer establishes its superior image:European civilized,male of power,human conqueror.These three concrete images together constitute a complete picture of the colonizer.Thus,the three chapters devoted respectively to the analysis of the three concrete images.The first chapter is devoted to the analysis of“European civilized”.As the Europeans,the superiority of the colonizers comes mainly from their "civilization"which according to the text,implies the knowledge and the faith.However the learned Thevet which can be considered as the representative of the knowledge turn out to be null and ridiculous.The colonizers who have the faith,the Catholic and Protestant priests and the chief Villegagnon have been proved to be immoralists,creators of hate and cruel tyrant.The second chapter tries to analyze the“male authority”.As do all patriarchal societies,Villegagnon and other colonizers dominate women by disparaging her and laying her role.Nevertheless,a young Protestant girl,Aude,launched a challenge to the male authority in her own way:she resists arranged marriage,pursues her own marriage and eventually becomes the dominator of the protestant group.During this change,she often uses her contemplation as a weapon.The third chapter contributes to the analysis of the“human conqueror”.Believing themselves to be the conquerors of nature,the colonizers transform madly the small island,but fell shortly after in distress.The root causes of this tragedy are their excessive admiration of the human work and indifference to nature or even deprecation of nature.Different from the colonizers,Indians lead a more peaceful life in the forest.Their primitive conception of nature and their way of life coincide with the thinking of today's ecologism.These three aspects that the novel reflect,namely the devaluation of Indian culture,the discrimination of the woman,the destruction of nature,constitute the main features of the image of the colonizers.Nowadays,will the new cultural and political colonization as well as the“colonization”of the nature follow the same old disastrous road?...