The Construction Of Escape - On Wang Xiaobo 's Novels

Wang Xiaobo is a famous contemporary Chinese writer, who has a complicated life. His works had little influence during his lifetime but have become a hit after death. Although Wang’s novels are limited in number, they are unique and self-contained, mainly included in "Time Trilogy". Wang started his writing in the late years of the Cultural Revolution, continued in the80’s when he studied in US, and reached a peak after he became a freelance writer in the90’s,suddenly stopped by the unexpected death. Wang’s novels are filled with escape, typically shown as the characters who are escaping, hiding and seeking, and the space-time setting of the narration. This is related to his three escape events in life:in the "Down to the Countryside Movement", Wang as an educated youth, escaped from his family and urban life. That’s when and why he started to create a spiritual world by writing novels to run away from the realities of everyday life. During his college life in US, Wang escaped from the civil background of politics and sense of mainland China and the memory and experience of the Cultural Revolution, his novels formed two types: one focus on criticizing and reflecting the Cultural Revolution, the other focus on imagination by rewriting some Chinese classic novels. In the90’s, Wang back to China and became a freelance writer. This life choice was seen as an escape from the national system, which made him hold the independent position to explore the art. From the above, escape is an important key word to Wang’s novels. This paper uses escape as an entry point to discuss Wang’s novels and to explore its unique value.This paper is divided in three parts. Chapter one is the first part, dividing Wang’s creation into different period by the three escape events in life. Focus on the relationship between those events and his novels; indicate these life experiences are the external reasons for the escape in his novels. Chapter two to chapter four is the second part, which back to the texts. Discuss the escape performances in novels on theme, characters and narration by the influence of the three escape events in life. Wang choose love, death, dystopia as themes of his novels, which are out of the ordinary and offending taboos. He shaped a series of intellectuals and their allies by letting them run away from authority, creating a spiritual world in writing to escape from the daily life, and choosing to be an outsider of the society and the mainstream culture. Through the success of these marginalized and little characters’escape, and the failure of heroes’ escape, Wang shows his anti-hero value in novels. In the aspect of narrative, escape is shown as the space-time setting and interaction of past, present and future in novels. In addition, the methods also include a flexible narrative time, narrative angle and the skill of metafiction. The final part is chapter five, which analyzing the contemporary literary value of Wang’s novels based on these marginal traits brought by the escape in and out of his novels.