Emasculated Hero

The charm of mythology fascinates us forever. The mythology, especially theancient mythology, has nearly embraced every motif of literature and arts from theview of comparative thematology. The pedigree of gods grew up with humanhistory. Even in the 20th century, as modern science being crazily intruded into thetraditional humane fields by an unprecedented pace, the return of the mythicismhas become an antithesis of history. People show a particular interest in therebelling gods of mythology. Perhaps they are the incarnations of human gloryideal;perhaps they're bearing humanity's concealed desire;perhaps they aremankind itself at all——the eternal body of contradiction. From them, we havefound a distinct clue in the developing history of mankind, that is, castrationcomplex .We will have a kind of reinterpretation on the rebelling Gods in Chinese andWestern literature based on the combination of the theory of Sigmund Freud'scastration complex with the method of comparative thematology. From theviewpoint of cross-cultural interpretation, we would also like to learn more aboutthe different meanings in culture shared by Chinese and western literature behindthe rebelling Gods.The whole thesis can be divided into four chapters as follows:ChapterⅠis about theoretic backgrounds of Freud and Simone de Beauvoir'scastration complex. R.Scholes has made the mythological interpretation on Freud'stheories, from which we looked through the images of Gods to sum up the themeof castration complex recurred throughout mythology. Thus the feasibility ofcastration complex has been proved.ChapterⅡgives a detailed analysis and comparison of the castration images toexplain the theme of castration in literature. The castration images can be dividedinto three classes: successful castrators, unsuccessful castrated ones and thepersons who castrate themselves voluntarily. Those images are all reflected inliterary works. Furthermore, the complicated contradiction exists in everyone'sown inside. The female also play an important role in castration complex.Moreover, this chapter goes further to explore the personality dissimilation fromthe body castration, which has a close relation with the civilized advancement ofhumans.ChapterⅢ made a general analysis on the theme of castration in mythologyfrom the viewpoint of cross-cultural interpretation. On one hand, we can't adopt thesame scale in the cross-cultural interpretation on Chinese and western mythologybecause the cultural backgrounds are different;on the other hand, since thephenomenon of castration is widespread both in Chinese and Western works, it canbecome the comparative object. This chapter would analyze the different culturalbackgrounds between China and the West from a comparison viewpoint, andreview the theme of castration from our system.ChapterⅣ is about some implications of the theme of castration in literaturefor the spirit of modern times. The research of mythology has its unique modernsignificance. Reviewing the humanity history of civilization, we would know thatwe are exactly the castrated heroes. Castration complex is precisely the rites ofpassage which humanity have to undergo in their lives.Different readers will present different Hamlet in their eyes. Whenever wecome into the mythology fields, attempting to understand those rebelling gods, wewould experience a new kind of feeling. The significance of the thesis both inreality and theory is expressed. We hope we can adopt a new kind ofreinterpretation on the rebelling gods in Chinese and Western literature based onsome famous theories. The viewpoint of comparison or cross-cultural interpretationwould be available and useful. We would also like to learn more about the deepmeanings shared by Chinese and Western literature behind the mythology, so as tooffer some illuminations for human beings in the perplexed state of modernsociety.