Unnatural Narrative In Mo Yan's Life And Death Are Wearing Me Out And George Orwell's Animal Farm

Due to the influence of the realistic tradition,mimetic literature,which imitates reality,has long been prized,with “mimetic” believed to be identical to “realistic,” however anti-mimetic or unnatural characters,events,scenarios,and settings exist in literary practices in order to challenge readers' cognitive parameters.Humanity's cognitive faculties owe much to literary interpretation.Unnatural narratology concentrates on unnatural elements that are physically,logically,and humanly impossible,and by naturalizing or unnaturalizing reading strategies,it explores the unconventional approaches writers may take in order to deal with complicated experiences and thoughts.This project examines Mo Yan's Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out and George Orwell's Animal Farm from the perspective of unnatural narratology,seeking to identify a spiritual intimacy and shared ethical stance beneath both works' unnatural narratives.By employing a novel approach,this paper is dedicated to enriching comparative studies on Mo Yan and George Orwell at present.The paper is composed of three parts: an Introduction,four chapters,and a conclusion.The introduction consists of A Critical Survey of Mo Yan and George Orwell,Unnatural Narrative and Naturalizing Interpretation Strategies and Theme and Organization.The first part presents a cirtical survey of both Mo Yan comparative studies and Orwell comparative studies,pointing out many comparative studies of Mo Yan and Orwell focus on anti-totalitarian political allegories as well as the quest for individual freedom and equality,but to a great extent neglect the narrative features.The second part briefly outlines unnatural narrative and interpretation strategies;the third part introduces the goal of the paper and its structure and argues that the significance of comparison lies in a deeper understanding of the two writers' literary features and enrich the current Mo Yan and Orwell comparative studies.The body of the study compares Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out and Animal Farm from three perspectives: unnatural narrators,unnatural scenarios and unnatural temporal models.In unnatural narrators,both writers employ talking animals to disclose historical or political truth.Despite their diverged animal images,both texts appeal for vitality of the individual.Besides that,there are in Mo Yan's work ecological implications,which echoes with contemporary Chinese writers such as Zhang Wei,Zhou Tao and so on.As to unnatural scenarios,both works speak for the weak and the common people,and focus on man's loss of ethical identities and ethical confusions under totalitarianism.Orwell not only directs his criticism at the power politics but also at a binary oppositional mindset.While Mo Yan follows his predecessors like Lu Xun and Ba Jin,expressing a humanist concern for all living beings.With regard to temporal loops,both works do not fall into the trap of nihilism: Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out resonates with the aesthetics and looping narrative structures of Chinese classical novels.Mo's novel rejects mundane desires while simultaneously attempting to preserve life vitality and historical memory in order to undertake social responsibility,which presents a critical attitude toward Buddhism.Orwell makes use of narrative loops to demonstrate that continuous enlightenment is the key to putting an end to the totalitarian nightmare.Though their narrative styles and features differ,as Mo Yan's work displays a salient color to tell the story whereas Orwell is more restrained in language and tends to show the story,both novels share an ethical stance promoting vigilance against authority,and a humanist concern for the common people and for humanity as a whole.For Mo Yan,the strength of memory lies in his narrative exploration of social responsibility,which echoes Orwell's theme of enlightenment.Moreover,by depicting man's spiritual numbness in a totalitarian society,Orwell reminds his readers that each individual plays a vital role in establishing ideal political and social ethics,which also correlates in some implicit way with Mo Yan's praise of the vigor and vitality of the individual life.