On Lao She 's Anti - Japanese War And National Spirit

Lao She, who is honored as “people’s artist”, has important status in China’s modern literature history. Since he entered the literature circle, Lao She has left the world with abundant literature which has unique pattern and writing style. Since 1939, in order to accommodate the anti-Japanese War situation, and to propagandize anti-Japanese War with drama, Lao She started drama writing. He completed nine dramas successively: The Remaining Fog, Country is the most important, Zhang Zizhong, The Problem of Mianzi, Dragon and Snake on the Land, Returning, Who Arrives at Chongqing First, Tiger Wang, The Good Teacher, which were called jointly as “Lao She’s Anti-Japanese War dramas”.In modern literature research, scholars have been dedicated to the research of Lao She’s drama after the foundation of the country, while most of his anti-Japanese War dramas have been neglected, which has very negative impact on the overall grasp of Lao She’s literature achievement and the objective description of his writing track. Compared to his dramas after the foundation of the country, the nine anti-Japanese War dramas of Lao She seems to be kind of na?ve, however, they were footstones for the former ones. In the nine dramas, Lao She put the thought of “saving the country with national spirit” into his writing. He shows the national spirit through the shaping of plot, dialogue and characters, trying to awake the confused countrymen, encouraging Chinese people from different class to join the great work of anti-enemies and saving the country together. These nine anti-Japanese war dramas are reflections of Lao She’s patriotic feelings and social responsibility, having social and literature values and cannot be ignored.The few research about the anti-Japanese War dramas are about the background, language and plot analysis of these dramas, but the overall research on Lao She’s anti-Japanese War is not enough. Therefore, on the basis of former research, this paper aims at the research of Lao She’s use of national spirit in his anti-Japanese war dramas, including the reason why he uses national spirit, how he uses national spirit to propagandize anti-Japanese war, and the meaning of using national spirit. This paper is divided into four parts: first, the choice of drama forms and the entry point of national spirit; second, the analysis on positive description of national spirit in these dramas; third, the analysis on negative description of national spirit and reconstruction of national spirit; and fourth, the meaning of the depiction of national spirit in Lao She’s anti-Japanese war dramas.