Study On The Five Themes Of Post-80s' Novels

The emergence of Post-80s' literature is a significant literary phenomenon in Chinese contemporary literature.The “New Concept Composition Contest” officially held by Mengya magazine in 1999,Internet as a medium of literary writing,together with the commercialization of writing,have undoubtedly promoted the emergence and development of Post-80s' literature to a certain extent.In 2000,“Post-80s” was officially used by a Post-80s' writer Chun Shu,to name those writers who were born from 1980 to 1989.Since then,Post-80s' literature writing community has been gradually formed.Outshining others in Post-80s' literature,Post-80s' novels have achieved quite fruitful results with more abundant themes.The theme of Post-80s' novels has shifted from youth narrative to family,love and sex,and sufferings of local and urban life as the writers entered into their “post-adolescence” stage from “adolescence” stage.Instead of writing a single and superficial campus youth theme,now,the Post-80s' novels,which focus on social reality and deeply reveal humanity,using diversified narrative means rather than a simple narrative structure,are progressing towards creation maturity.This thesis makes an in-depth interpretation of the texts of post-80s' novels with five main themes,including family and clan,love and sex,suffering of life,eco-ethics and religious culture.The mostly expressed theme in the Post-80s' novels is the conflict between individuals,families and clans.Post-80s' novels are unique in writing the relationship between individuals,families,and clans under intergenerational ethical conflicts.In their writings,the growth of an individual is to break the old ethical concepts of the family and clan,thus establishing a new order of survival.In these novels,young protagonists break the so-called family rules in a certain way,where individual nature is given play to a desired level.Some protagonists even try to get rid of the restraint of outdated conventions and customs in a state of madness,so as to achieve the ideal pursuit of heart as well as inner self-satisfaction.The right to speak and a prominent position in a family are gained through cultural feedback.At the same time,individual characters also dispel their family ethics while establishing a new order and private ethics space.Post-80's authors rarely take political considerations in their novels.The history view shown in their texts is from a perspective of observation standing outside the history.And historical background of a clan is always downplayed by these authors.Love and sex is another major theme in Post-80s' s novels.The theme of love and sex is differently expressed from tradition order of love in these novels,but in a model of ”desire-to-love”,where the importance of individual existence and sexual desire are highlighted.The novels re-examine the value of sex and overturn traditional sexual ethics.The diversity to express the theme of love and sex,the highlighted main body of love and sex,the featured narrative space where private space is open to public while public space is privatized,and the bold language of these novels have overturned traditional sexual values.In addition,homosexuality,as an indispensable part of the love and sex theme,is also written in Post-80s' novels.The third major theme of Post-80s' novels covered in this thesis is being and sufferings.Post-80s' novels write about material and spiritual sufferings,i.e.sufferings from body and soul based on individual's experience and perception.The writers pay close attention to people's existential state during the transitional period of society.Unsatisfied material basis of daily life to survive,mental sufferings caused by unrealized ideals of individuals',the pain for basic housing needs as well as for promotion in urban life,and the abnormal thoughts and behaviors of people as a result of absurd social reality are all written by the writers.Meanwhile,in the rural world,the same sufferings are also intertwined with the characters created by the writers.On top of the above,the theme of eco-ethics is the fourth major theme of Post-80s' novels.For animals and creatures,a harmonious yet antagonistic relation between human beings and animals and plants occur in these novels.Post-80s' novels reveal the arrogant behaviors of human beings,and expose the crimes of destroying natural ecology committed by human beings.Due to the cruelty of human beings,tension between animals and human beings is written in some of the novels.While,some others write about symbiosis between humans and animals,which is more like a relation of parasitizing and devouring.At the same time,for natural environment,on the one hand,Post-80s' novels present human beings' pursuit to the beauty of nature,as well as their love and respect for nature.The novels,through focus on nature,reinterpret ecology history and culture;rediscover the value of nature;and call for a return to the harmony between human and nature.However,On the other hand,the novels reveal a spiritual ecology crisis of human after being expelled from their land in the process of modernization.In Post-80s' novels,the writers made a painful cry for the plunder of natural resources and the transformation of their own living environment.As the pace of modernization accelerates,the increased complexity of human beings and their swollen desires for interests have led to a crisis of human spiritual ecology.At last,this thesis introduces the fifth theme of Post-80s' novels,which is the religious culture from a multi-dimensional perspective.Influenced by various religions,Post-80s' novels are featured by multiple religious cultures.Images,such as “ghosts”,“Buddha”,and “church”,and religious concepts,such as “mercy”,“original sin”,and “salvation” can be found as a result of multiple influences from Chinese folk religion,Buddhism,Christianity,Islam,etc.,in the novels with religious theme.Specially impacted by the perspective of uncertainty of life and the view of life and death in Buddhism,a unique narrative feature is found in the novel texts.