The Ethic Study Of Chinese And Western Family's Novels

Family is the unity of the society, which is the indicator of development, issue and crisis of the society. In the history of literature, it has always been a rich field that many writers cultivated diligently, which produced a large amount of masterpieces. At the beginning of 20th century, a special period, family's novel becomes the sparkle of literary world for the moment. In the west, such as Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family, Galsworthy's the Forsyte Saga, William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury and Martin du Gard's Les Thibault, etc., these works have all got Nobel Prize for literature. And a great and realistic family's novel " The Turbulent Trilogy: Family, Spring, Autumn " has emerged in this period in China.This thesis proceeds with analysis of these five families, and mainly probes into two important aspects of family's culture: Family consciousness and family's human relation. Chapter one focuses on family consciousness, which discusses embodiment of the sense of family duty and the sense of honour of the family in these five families separately, and also shows the differences between them. Both China and Western families aren't lack of the victims for the interests of family, but by contrast, we find, a batch of people of servility are trained under the system of Chinese family, they could sacrifice for family unconditionally, which is from obligation only;the victims in the western family are willing to sacrifice for family, for the prerequisite that individual value should be affirmed, gaining the respect and praise of the family, thus prove his/her own value by sacrificing;Chapter two mainly probes into the abnormal behavior of family's relation, by analysis of three kinds of basic relations between father and son , husband and wife ,brethren separately, comparing its similarities and differences, then give explanation from the cultural aspect. Through the analysis, the conclusion is distortion of family relation and disappearance of family's consciousness on rebels, must cause the extinction of the family.The deeply attached and rejective feeling to the family likes a pair of twin babies in the emotion of authors. The fall of the family is an inevitable tendency, But these works have not denied the value of the family, as to the family, these writers all nourish deepfeelings, because each of them comes from big family, and regard their own families as the prototype in these works. In novels, authors represent all sorts of dark side of the family, and attack many unreasonable things bitterly, even arrange the collapsing result, but the limitlessly sympathy under the merciless attack expresses the ideal of the harmonious family. These questions are mainly discussed in chapter three.This thesis finally gives a simple summary and comparison to the pros and cons of the culture of Chinese and Western family. The west takes individual value, but China then favors family's overall benefit. Author believe that family ethics spirit should strike the individuality and whole family benefits into equilibrium.