A Research On The Spiritual Predicaments In Yan Lianke’s Novels

Spiritual predicament means those plights in the mental realm,that is,people’s thinking,will or emotions are deeply in pain and can not be saved for a long time.Focusing on spiritual predicament is a deep concern for contradictions or conflicts of spiritual world: the basic demands of human beings are suppressed by some kind of strong and lasting force,and then there are long and intense conflicts between these two forces,which cause spiritual predicament in people’s minds,and people’s behavior and psychology are deeply reflected.Yan Lianke,as a local writer,through shows the suppression of individual spiritual demands and the spiritual predicament caused by the social environment,especially the local social environment,and shows his emphasis on personal values by objectively focusing on the real life of the local people and the real living conditions of those people.This paper focuses on the spiritual predicament of the local people presented in his novels and explores in detail on the specific representations,formations and existing reasons for these spiritual predicaments and their cultural connotations.The paper is divided into five chapters.The first chapter is the introduction.This chapter expounds the research background,purpose and significance of this paper,analyses the research status of Yan Lianke’s works at home and abroad,and defines the research scope.Chapter two is the presentation of spiritual predicament.It analyses and categorizes the living conditions and spiritual states of different characters in different novels from the spiritual predicament’s two aspects: behavior and psychology.Firstly,it explores from the aspect of behavior,which mainly covers four external manifestations: the morbidity of the relationship on sex,the annihilation of individual demands,the madness of power chasing and the materialization of human beings.Secondly,through the psychological analysis,it explores the corresponding internal manifestations,external representation and internal representations overlap and influence each other.Chapter three discussing the sources of spiritual predicament.Starting from the feudalism moral culture,to bureaucratic politics,and to the essential characteristics of peasant consciousness and the spiritual response of the times.It explores in detail the three strong and lasting repressive forces that conflict with the basic demands of human beings,and these three forces are the fundamental reasons of the spiritual predicament in Yan Lianke’s novels.Chapter four is the cultural connotation of spiritual predicament.The spiritual predicament shows the awakening of peasants’ individual consciousness,the author’s critical thinking on the local society’s suppression on individual consciousness.And this paper presents the author’s efforts to build a utopia for the local peasants who are in spiritual plights because of suppression.The fifth chapter is the conclusion.It comprehensively states the overall research results of this paper.It clarifies that there are surely spiritual plights in Yan Lianke’s novels caused by cultural and moral traditions,local power system and the features of the times,and these spiritual dilemmas bear the corresponding cultural connotations.