Studies On The Existential Consciousness In Sha Ting's Early Novels

In the history of modern Chinese literature, Sha Ting is a writer with unique writing styles. His detailed descriptions about Sichuan local customs and people, and his writing technique of objective realism have been always advocated. The thesis attempts to inspect, analyze and evaluate Sha Ting's early novels in the light of existential consciousness which is rarely involved by literature researchers. The so-called Sha Ting's early novels refer to his novels before 1949. In addition to the introduction and conclusion parts, the main content of this thesis includes the following three chapters:Chapter 1: The embodiment of existential consciousness in Sha Ting's novels. This chapter adopts the direct-viewing and concrete demonstration method, combined with the definition of existential consciousness, to display different levels of existential consciousness in Sha Ting's novels. The existential consciousness can be understood as the union of situation consciousness and the pursuit of significance. The situation consciousness refers to the instinctive (biological or physiological) and inertial (cultural and traditional) reaction to natural and social living environments which mostly point to the survival of life. The pursuit of significance ,which is also a way of proving the existence value ,not only refers to the simple survival of life, but also points to the self-examination of spirit and commitment to social responsibility . This chapter is divided into three sections: bottom elegy—the ordinary people's tenacious and numb existence; savage existence—the powerful people on the abuse of power, obsession and grab for money; "person" in the way----the awakening of humanity, holding ground in the plight and making efforts to change their status quo. The former two sections focus on the situation consciousness, and the third section points to the other dimension of existential consciousness: the pursuit of significance. To be specific, the third section displays the pursuit for personal values and ideals, commitments to social responsibility, the effort and hopelessness in the pursuit way and the falling in the real world.Chpter 2: The reasons for the existential consciousness in Sha Ting's novels. This chapter mainly adopts the psychology and the social history criticism method in four perspectives----nation, region, times and the writer's personal imprint, to explore the reason for the existential consciousness. In my opinion, the ordinary people's tenacious and numb existence is related to Chinese traditional cultures and deep-rooted bad habits; regional culture in Sichuan makes the Sichuanese savage existential consciousness more obviously than cultures in other regions; the impact of time tide opens the hoping window for the closed "iron house" and provides conditions for the significant existential consciousness. In addition, the chapter, in two perspectives---life experiences and realism attitude, also tries to reveal the reason why Sha Ting reflects such existential consciousness.Chapter 3: The philosophical thinking on existential consciousness in Sha Ting's novels. This chapter adopts two concepts created by existentialism philosopher Haidegeer---falling state and being-towards-death to deeply think the existential consciousness in the perspective of existence significance. In this perspective, to understand existence, the former two kinds of existential consciousness mainly fall into the falling state which is the original state of human existence, and the situation consciousness is the reason for the existential consciousness. Then how to transcend the falling state and make people realize the existential value? The answer is being-towards-death in eigentlichkeit. Sha Ting's novels provide us with two ways to the eigentlichkeit. On the one hand, he pushes his characters to battlefields, fighting for existence through the force of environment and makes them wake up from the falling state. On the other hand, he shows his character's action initiative to existential significance. Thus the latter existential consciousness is the ideal state of human existence because it provides the possibility of enhancing human existence value. Today, under the impact of commodity economy tides, the values of pragmatism and utilitarianism exert great influences on the hearts of contemporary people. Faced with all sorts of temptations, how the people living in the real world face the world they live in? Sha Ting 's recognition for existential consciousness give us enlightenments.