Historical Reflection And Pursuit In The Narrative Of Utopia

The picture of totalitarian utopia delineated in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four has exactly been in accordance with the period of Chinese history,especially the Cultural Revolution witnessed by Wang Xiaobo when he was growing up,which constitutes the base of his recognition and acceptance of the novel.Nineteen Eighty-Four has offered him a clear perspective of totalitarian politics and society,helping him understand what happened during the Cultural Revolution and how the political power had impacted ordinary people.After accepting and getting illumination from the book,Wang Xiaobo with a turning point similar to Orwell,from the idealism to its breaking down during the totalitarian life,also has begun his dystopia writing like Orwell.He builds up a dark utopian world sharing similar skeleton with Nineteen Eighty-Four and also addresses the discipline on people's thoughts and bodies inflicted by the authorityjust like the way Orwell imagines in his Nineteen Eighty-Four.However,what differentiates Wang's dystopia from Orwell's work soaked up in omnipresent repression is his portrayal of real love in sadomasochistic way and beyond the politically ideological sphere and complicated application of modernistic narrative techniques,which have opened numerous windows for his dystopian fictions.Apart from the future-themed novels,Wang also spreads his dystopian narrative in time-space dimension,through adapting romances of the Tang Dynasty and focuses on human existence predicament under the restrictions of powers of the ancient society in a bantering way.He then puts forward his manner to take the life in the aesthetic attitude,to pursue wisdom,interest and sex.But in these seeming transcendences of the limits of Nineteen Eighty-Four,there also exists Wang's limitation in that he finally failed to escape the sense of pessimism in despair and that his aesthetic ideal is too delicate to survive in the world.