A Study On The Wandering Consciousness

Gunter Grass, whose works are regarded as "frolicsome black fables portray the forgotten face of history", is a famous German writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature at1999. His masterpiece, The Tin Drum, is considered as a modern picaresque novel by its unique narrative approach and means of artistic expression. The work not only succeeds to the traditional method of the picaresque novels in characterizing the center figure Oscar, but also innovates on the base of that. He combined this method with the historical background and the gist of the modern art, applying the technique of exaggeration and multi-perspective narration to form an exceptional style of modernism, and built successfully upon the base of artistic innovation the picaresque consciousness. Grass merged in his novel historic events taken place in between the First and the Second World War, showing to us the decayed living situation of the dispirited citizens in Nazi Germany, the lost in spirit caused by a multi-cultural identity in the special place Danzing, the exiling experience of the homeless, as well as the perplexity of cultural situation after the postwar spiritual freedom, exploring endlessly the mental crisis of the modern citizens and their solutions. This thesis analyzes the cultural cultivation and incarnation of the picaresque consciousness based on referring and creating of the artistic tradition in the aspect of the cultural explanation of the picaresque novels, exploring the humanistic values and modern impact of it.This thesis is formed by six parts, the introduction part presents briefly the life experience and art achievement of the writer, as well as the status value and the historical and cultural background of the work. It analyzes the research status at home and abroad, pointing out the less studied area, and leads to the reason it choose picaresque sensation as the main aspect of the thesis.Chapter one analyzes the reason why the novel is a typical picaresque novel. The picaresque novels formed on the basis of the European traditional culture have a rich cultural background and a unique artistic character. The Tin Drum carried on the traditional method of the picaresque novels, blended into it the narrative method of "inner perspective", the model of episodic plot, compound type of character building, and the simple but vivid daily art. The proper innovation based on those gives the novel a basic character of a typical picaresque novel.Chapter two explores the cultural evolution of the picaresque sensation. A typical picaresque novel has a distinctive picaresque sensation. This sensation in The Tin Drum is fostered in a special time background. Under the tyranny of the Nazis and the shadow of the war, the outcastes are experiencing hard times, and the double-cultural identity caused by the multi-cultural city of Danzing leads to a kind of spiritual roaming. The two of them, the displacement of physical space and the spiritual drifting, interweaves with each other and forms the exploration of two layers, both survival and spiritual, and the double wandering of the inner and outer space.Chapter three discussed the multi-text objectifying of the picaresque sensation. The life experience of the writer gives the picaresque sensation of the work a deeper meaning. The psychic trauma the war gives the people will not be easily erased from their memories during the exiling, and what they are facing is deeper confusion and depression. The similar life experience of the hero makes his wandering and seeking endless, in face of the frustration of the spiritual home and the dilemma of modern civilization, he chooses to exiling himself and wandering at the edge forever.Chapter four deals with the modern written form of the picaresque sensation in the novel. As a picaresque novel in the modern sense, the sensation is inevitably carried with it the traits of modernism. Since the hero of the novel is a special dwarf picaresque, the deformed character building reflects some artistic traits of the absurdist. The outline of the story is a symbolic ironic fable; the multi-layer building of the black fable is rich in the modern narrative feature, as well as the political irony. The crossed narrative angles break the traditional touch of the first person, forming a clear differentiation of the inner and outer layers and a wholesome structure. The touch of salutatory montage, an abundant of free imagination and the application of inner monologue are marked with the technique of the modern stream of consciousness. Different from the traditional picaresque who found his spiritual home finally, the hero of the novel remains a stranger wandering from town to town after his hard times of pursuing a home, and keeps the fear for the future till the end of the novel. This is an opening end of wandering. The long lost of the spiritual home and the difficulty in finding one’s cultural identity is the conclusion of the analysis of picaresque sensation.In conclusion part it generalized the main content and key points of the argument of the thesis, discussed briefly the forming and incarnation of the picaresque sensation, combining with the writer’s innovation to explore the deeper meaning behind the picaresque sensation. It not only emphasis on the unprecedented and over-raced meaning of the novel, but also reveals the general dilemma and spiritual crisis the modern culture has brought to the human surviving conditions, as well as the importance of pursuing the living value and the spiritual destination.