Bottom-class Narration In The New Century's Literature

At the end of the 20th century, articles and literature on the life of bottom-classwere initially published in Tian Ya and Nanfang Wenxue. Some professional writersstart to low their views, write their own civilianized memoirs and illustrate the realcruelty of bottom-class. All their narrations indicate the unique sympathy ofintellectuals.The concept of "Bottom-class" is firstly found in The Prison Notebooks written byItalian Marxist Antonio Gramsci. It indicates a social power, which is aliened fromthe mainstream of European society and subordinate to the social group. AntonioGramsci mainly concerned with the issues of bottom-class under the rule of his party.In 1980s, a group of Indian excellent historians started to do a research on theplebeians in South Asian society and explored every aspect of plebeian's situation. InChina, as a social concept, Bottom-class is systematically illustrated in Report onChinese Social Structures in the Modern Society written by LU Xueyi. As a literatureconcept, bottom-class is initially appeared in the Cai Xiang's prose Bottom. In Bottom,Cai's definition of Bottom-class has the sympathy of intellectuals. With the comingnew century and the literature society's higher attentions to bottom-class, thenarration of Bottom-class develops rapidly. It has become a strong literaturephenomenon. The theoretical society opened an intense theory discussion on the focusof bottom-class narration. There were a big-scale discussion on Bottom-class in manycritics such as Literature theory, shanghai Literature, Beijing Literature, LiteratureContend, Modern Literature Analysis, Modern Literature and Literature Analysis. Inthe speech of Modernity, bottom-class literature in the form of pioneer illustrates theinsight and blindness in literature. Meanwhile, the development of Bottom-classliterature proposed a question to the modern literature history.In the view of modern culture, Bottom-class literature focuses on the literalexpression of reality issues that reflects various social problems, such as Cao Zhenglu's Naer on laid-off issue, Liu Qingbang's Shen Mu on Coalmine crisis, LiuJiming's Fangsheng Gechang on extremely demanding wages, TV series NuanChunon left-behind children in rural China and Sun Huifen's Mingong on the city workersfrom countryside etc. These literal works are from reality topics and they touched thereaders and audience's heart by the vivid and realistic recurrence. These worksdemonstrate writer's sympathy to the bottom class as well as their exploration onhuman nature and morality, which is considered to be a final humanity care ofhuman's soul.Being a Bottom-class faces the crisis of identity cognition and the experience ofbeing aliened. Most Bottom-class are from countryside, away from their hometown tothe city with the hope and dream. They silently tolerant the strangeness and resistanceof city and embarrassingly face the crisis of identity cognition with the anxiety ofleaving from the hometown. The Bottom-class is experiencing the confusion and theanxiety as a subordinate. The result of entering the city often turns out theconfrontation to city or the return to countryside.Some excellent works with the spirit of times appeared in the Bottom-classworks, such as JIA Pingou's Gaoxing, LIU Qingbang's Shenmu (winner of LaosheLiterature Prize 2002), LI Rui's Taiping Fengwu, Sui Guifen's series of XiemaShanzhuang (nominated as the Fourth LU Xun's Literature Prize) and FANXiaoqing's Chengshi Jianshi (The Fourth LU Xun's Literature Prize) etc. TheseWorks have shown an excellent quality on the narration structure, narration style andfigure description. These works are the examples of Bottom-class literature. Theseworks illustrate many vivid figures, such as the cruelty of murderer, the hand-working,backwards of peasants, the lost of the laid-off, the strivings of workers in the city.Through the description of these figures on marriage or everyday life, these worksreflect the fate of bottom-class and the development of the times and society.Realism has a long history in Chinese literature. There are a lot of reflections thebottom-class literature bring to us in the new century. In the time of vanity, variousliterature skills have been overheated such as consumer culture, market culture,personal writing, lust writing and fantasy seeking. We should calm down and reflect the history. "Only the calmness can avoid the easiness and having time to decidewhether to choose or reject. The deeply thought will help oneself achieve theexceeding of modernity and come to a deep reflection on history and reality." Basedon the time with the recall of history, we will devote ourselves to pursue the futurewith the spirit of life. From the end of last century to recent decades, we happilynotice that bottom-class literature is a spring bud in realism, which brings us a springand gives us a hope that more and better bottom-class literature will come following.