"Lu Xun Spirit" In Lai He's Novels

Lai He has always been honored as "the father of new literature in Taiwan" and "Lu Xun of Taiwan" in the history of Taiwan modern literature. The former title highlights his sublime status in the movement of Taiwan modern literature. The latter one concludes his literary spirit. It is his novel that can adequately embody this dual significance among all of his works. As a part of Chinese modern literature, Taiwan modern literature has grown up under the impact of"May 4th movement"new literature, therefore the writing of Lai He was evidently affected by Lu Xun. Articles on the connections between Lai He and Lu Xun in Taiwan academic circles are rare while relative research results are mainly worked out by the mainland academic circles.Under the basic method of close reading and the combination of history and aesthetics, this paper is going to ,on the basis of existing results ,make a further discussion about"Lu Xun spirit"in Lai He's working from three aspects: enlightenment spirit, humanitarianism feelings and critical spirit. So what kind of"Lu Xun spirit"has been shown from the novels of "the father of new literature in Taiwan", Lai He?There are mainly three categories of contents on the aspect of enlightenment spirit: (1) The awareness of national consciousness (2) The awareness of human consciousness (3) The awareness of literary aesthetic consciousness. There are incisive connections between the characteristic of Lai He's novels and Lu Xun's novel writing.Besides, Lai He's novels have also expressed sympathetic humanitarianism feelings and heartfelt compassion for the lower layer:1.care and sympathy for the weak;2.maintaining the survival dignity of the weak. The critical spirit in his novel is tightly linked to his sympathetic humanitarianism feeling. He criticized profoundly on the unfair and mean reality and the weakness of national character because of his witness of people's suffering living state and sympathy for their misfortune destinies. Thus, he exposed the"man-eating"essence of social system and feudal etiquette, and he also criticized the weakness of national character such as"mind of a onlooker","mind of slaves","self-deception", etc. We can find not only the deep influence of"May 4th movement"new literature on Taiwan modern literature, but also the unique artistic individuality and spiritual power of Lai He differing from that of Lu Xun.