An Archetypal Interpretation Of The White-deer Image In Bailu Plain

The work of Bailu Plain is one of the important achievements on the Chinese novels of 1990s. It once obtained the fourth Mao dun literature award for reflecting the spirit of the times. In this work, the writer Chen Zhongshi not only analyzed the recent half century and unfolded the process that the multi-cultural consciousness collided by many artistic means, but also deeply expressed the self-consideration about history and the ideal about the new age's culture. The white-deer mysterious image runs through the work. It not only is the clue which the writer used to construct the work's structure, but also is the unique starting point to inquiry the work's connotations for the readers.Seen the literary works from ancient times to the present, we can see that the white-deer is a typical image and an archetype. It implicated the Chinese national totemic consciousness and carried the ancestors'special aesthetic ideals. At present, the commentators'researches on it mostly limited to its symbolic meaning or mysterious relish and rarely excavated its profound connotations. This paper attempts to draw lessons from Northrop Frye's archetype criticism theory and the related results which the Chinese scholars have achieved in order to give an interpretation about its profound cultural connotations. This article discusses three aspects on the white-deer archetypal image.Firstly, as an archetype in the Chinese literature the white-deer image not only existed in the cultural classical books, but also existed in all kinds of style literatures. Under these conditions, it embodied the ancients'consciousnesses about totem and reproduction worship. Meanwhile, it became the auspicious divine and moral perfect symbols. It also contained the profound implied meanings about the millenarianism and carried the ancestors'aesthetic ideals.Secondly, in this novel, the static manifestation of the white-deer image mainly acts in two aspects: as an archetype has the intercommunity about the human ideals and the narrative structure functions. The intercommunity mainly manifests as that the white-deer is an auspicious divine symbol and an envoy that can rescue the earthlings. The narrative structure functions manifest in three aspects: the characters'fates, the development of plot and the work's structure. Thus the novel's plot and structure have the possibility to connect integrally.Thirdly, the practical significances which the white-deer image has mainly carried are embodied by its'dynamic transformation in the process that different human hunted the white-deer as an ideal in the text. In this process, the transformation for the character was different. Some people guarded securely original cultural psychology structure, such as Bai Jiaxuan and Mr. Zhu. Some people formed the new cultural psychology structure gradually, such as Lu Zilin and Bailing.In a word, the white-deer image as an archetype finally points to the consideration about the Chinese cultural ideal. We should inherit the factors that have strong vitalities in the traditional culture and absorb the rational compositions in various cultural thoughts, then melt the soul of the national cultural anew. Chen Zhongshi in here not only affirms the significance of discarding the traditional culture and the guiding strength of advanced culture, but also points out that the process between the traditional culture and the modern civilization'conflicts and fusions is full of pains. The concept that the new culture will generate from the pains just is the profound meaning that the writer wants to tell us by choosing the white-deer archetypal image.