An Alienated Identity Of The Child:A Comparative Study Of Ian Mcewan's The Child In Time And Yu Hua's Cries In The Drizzle

Ian McEwan and Yu Hua are both illustrious writers in the contemporary English and Chinese literary arena.The Child in Time and Cries in the Drizzle are the representatives of their maturity in literary creation,in which child images occupy the central position in both structure and theme.Up to now,there have been abundant studies on the two novels,and child images are also the focus of them.However,through literature review,the comparative study of the child images in the two novels is still an unexplored field.Most of the studies are restricted to one nation and one culture,with conclusions remaining on the grotesque presentation of the child images or the theme of growth,while the alienated identity of the child is rarely studied.Through the literature review of the alienation theme,this study finds the two novels,although created in different literary context of alienation,embody certain common thoughts.Based on Erich Fromm's alienation theory and Erik Erikson's child identity studies,this thesis mainly adopts the parallel study of comparative literature and close reading method to study the grotesque child images in the two novels,unraveling McEwan and Yu's common poetics and humanistic concerns on the alienation problem which leads to the identity dislocation between the child and the adult.Therefore,from this point,this thesis further examines the two writers' common reflection on children's alienated identity,providing a new perspective for the studies on the two writers as well as the alienation theme in literature.The first chapter of this thesis conducts a research on the alienated identity presented in society,under the influence of authority and space.The second chapter discusses children's alienated identity in human relationships,mainly from the aspects of friendship,gender relations and familial relations.The third chapter analyzes the child images' self-alienation.The final part concludes that Ian McEwan and Yu Hua,working within their respective social system,convey their thoughts on the alienated identity of the child by literary creation.Their works demonstrate that,despite the inevitable differences that set them apart,they both present the common concern on the alienation problem and the identity crisis in China and the west through the unique child characterization,revealing mankind's universal existential and spiritual predicament in the contemporary society as well as attempting to find a remedy.