A Study On The Narrative Ethics Of Chinese American Novels

The research object of this paper is American Chinese Novels,and the perspective of the research is narrative ethics.Trying to analyze the ethic connotation of the artistic form from five aspects: the characterization,point of view,plot structure,narrative time and narrative space.This paper is consist of three parts: introduction,text and conclusion.The introduction defines the scope of "American Chinese Novels",narrating the creation history of American Chinese Novels,reviewing and analyzing the research history and current situation of American Chinese Novels.In addition,it also analyzes the concept formation of "narrative ethics" and explains its main connotation.Finally,it also elaborates the differences between American Chinese writers and native Chinese writers in their novel creation due to the change of their ethical concepts.The first chapter analyzes the influence of American ethics and values on the writer's creation from the perspective of characterization.In the typomorphized characterization,the pursuit and worship of the elite intellectuals for money and social status reflects the deconstruction of the Confucian elite ethics by western utilitarian values.Western utilitarianism and pragmatism values of marriage ethics permeate through the female images,who married with American or American Chinese,and the tragic fate of the married female expresses the writers' negation of utilitarian marriage obscurely.The vilification of the Westerners who live at the foot of the social ladder shows that the American writers have subconscious racial discrimination,despite of their opposition to racial discrimination as they are the minorities in America.The influence of American ethical values on American Chinese Writers indicates in gender ethics,family ethics and intergenerational ethics by the way of analogy or contrast.In shaping the ultimate character,the mask type character indicates the mental depression and strange behavior caused by the modern ethics and the character who has split personality indicates the conflict of Chinese and western ethical values.In the second chapter,the author analyzes the ethical connotation of different narrative perspectives: internal perspectives,external perspectives and mixed perspectives.In the internal perspectives,experiential perspective can make readers get the same ethical position as the characters in the novel,and it contains the moral appeals of the author to reshape modern love ethics.The multi-narrative perspective breaks the unity of traditional point of view,which isomorphic with the pluralistic values in the west.In the external perspective,the neutrality of the objective perspective is associated with the neutrality of historical introspection.During narrating the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution,the position of observation is unanimous with the status of American Chinese.In the mixed point of view,the retrospective angle makes the author have the freedom of shuttling between the external perspective of the adult and the internal perspective of kids,which can integrate the subjective emotion judgment by introspecting the history.The mixed use of the multiple person and narrative perspective in The Lost Daughter of Happiness establish relationship between the reader,author and the character in the novel,which leads to the polyphonic ethical communication.The third chapter mainly analyses the ethical implications of the plot structure in American Chinese novels.the ethical anxiety caused by the author's dual marginalized identity is expressed through the single-line structure of "pursuit-escape" and "return-leave".In the multi-line plot structure,the author reveals their adjustment of self-values when the have identity crisis and ethical conflict between Chinese and America,and it also proclaim their subsistence ethic when they are fall into the dilemma of spirit and life by contrast and comparison.The closed circular structure implicates that the survive predicament is hard to break and the author have the cyclic life philosophy subconsciously.In the nested structure,the story about the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is embedded in the first level of narration as the second level,which reflects the historical ethics that the past has not disappeared but transform into anther form in current period.The extradiegetic provides a narrator for the main layer of narration,not only point out the origin and development of events,but also strengthen the theme of the novel.What's more,the author affect readers' congnition and evaluation about the events by moral judgment.Chapter Four elaborates how American Chinese writers set and arrange the time based on the human-centered Values.In narrative time,the author choose to describe the historical events briefly by accelerating the time,which could highlight the individual value among the flow of history.The struggle between soul and flesh is manifested by presenting the psychological time through time dilation.In the story time,because of different comprehension of time in Chineses and the West,the American Chinese writers use different categories of time to express the understanding of live and being.Moreover,American Chinese writers represent the contradictions and struggles of Chinese and American ethics in anachrony.In narrative,the author use retrospection to emphasize the emotional depression of the family ethics,and the jump of time implicated that Chinese ethics and American ethics are “the other” for each other.The fifth chapter takes space as the breakthrough point,pointing out that different writers have different characteristics in constructions of urban public space,daily private space and country space in foreign lands.The writing of American urban public space is diversified in different times,which is caused by two perspectives of modern industrial civilization.In the private space of daily life,the construction and setting of personal living space and private living room proclaims the social position and survive predicament of American Chinese writers.As an imagined community,Chinatown is the extension of China overseas.It is entrusted the deep attachment and rethink of Chinese traditional ethics,while the America Born Chinese demonizing it in literary creations.Essentially speaking,the Chinatown has the ideological character.The concluding part points out that American Chinese novels present different narrative characteristics because of the writers' different identities,ethical concepts and cultural choices.Its core meaning is to provide a mirror image of the other for the mainland literature,so that we can comprehensively and thoroughly understand our native culture.The significant value of this paper is to open mind for further research on overseas Chinese literature.