Interpretation Of Waiting From The Perspective Of Narrative Psychology

Ha Jin is one of the most prominent Chinese-American writers in the mainstream literary world of contemporary Chinese Americans.Since the success of the novel Waiting in 1999,Ha Jin has quickly become a shining star in the American publishing and academic world.Waiting,a once popular best-seller in the United States,has won Ha Jin many awards and a great reputation in American academia,and has been unanimously praised by critics and readers.Waiting is set in China from the 1960s to the 1980s.The plot of the novel revolves around the protagonist Lin Kong's eighteen-year journey in pursuit of "true love",which reflects the confrontation between the people's emotional demands and social rules and regulations and their helplessness when their emotional demands are not met.According to Ha Jin,the creation of Waitng is partly to reveal the characters' complicated inner activities.There are few researches on psychological conditions of the characters in Ha Jin's works in China,and little mention is made of the traumatic self-constructions of the characters in the works and their underlying causes.Consequently,the research on narrative psychology of the main characters in Ha Jin's novels will have corresponding academic values.This thesis analyzes Waiting from the perspective of narrative psychology,interprets the life stories of the three main characters,and explores the traumatic selves constructed in their life story narration and the deep reasons for waiting for nearly twenty years respectively.Based on the analyses of traumatic selves,this thesis interprets the narrative psychotherapies of the three main characters on themselves and the influences of the therapies on the self-awareness of the characters.The author puts forward some guiding suggestions for the construction of people's positive self,hoping to provide some new perspectives for the study of Waiting in China.This thesis is divided into four chapters.The first chapter is an introduction,which briefly introduces Ha Jin and Waiting,the review of researches of Waiting at home and abroad,as well as the main viewpoints and research fields of narrative psychology,including narrative self,traumatic self and narrative psychotherapy.Second to fourth Chapters are the main parts of this thesis.The second chapter analyzes Lin Kong's traumatic self-construction process,and explains Lin Kong's attempts to self-narrative psychotherapy and the therapeutic results.The third chapter analyzes the process of Manna Wu's traumatic self-construction,aiming to analyze the reason why she waited silently from trying to break through the present situation,and to discuss Manna Wu's attempt to self-narrative psychotherapy and the therapeutic effect.The fourth chapter analyzes the process of Shuyu Liu's traumatic self-construction,and explores Shuyu Liu's attempts to self-narrative psychotherapy and its influence on therapy.The last part is the conclusion,which concludes that the interpretation of narrative psychology can properly reveal the creative purpose of Waiting and fully analyze the self-construction and treatment process of the main characters.This study reveals that the main characters in the story found the power to reconstruct their stronger selves through the active narration of their own traumatic experiences.