| Michael Ende is a famous German writer of children's literature. His works keep an eye on the times and are filled with pungent criticisms towards the society. Issues involved and dealt with in his works are what contemporary people can not do with and have to care about. In his works, Ende examines the sick real world with "a third eye", putting forward metaphysical thoughts which are the revelation to modern people.This thesis studies the two most important fantasy novels MOMO and Die unendliche Geschichte that Ende completed in Rome, Italy. These two fantasy novels have received several awards and are once regarded by the Critics'Circle as "poetic masterpieces through the ages that reach the peak in world fantasy literature". Both of the two works focus on the existence and the fate of human being, with personalistic abnormality and dissimilation together with humanistic distortion and absence ingeniously presented while love endings add blood and flesh to the works. In MOMO, Ende condenses the deterioration of the modern society into the image of Die grauen Herren. In an age when time is regarded as money, Ende acclaims convincingly that time is not money but life which resides in our heart.Differing with MOMO which cuts in from the riddle of time, Die unendliche Geschichte starts with the relationship between real life and spiritual life, conceiving a visionary realm to represent the spiritual world of human being in contrast with the real world. When the visionary realm is doomed, a child from the human world is badly needed for its redemption which would be a kind of self rescue for humankind as the survival of the visionary realm is crucial to the existence of human being. Through the switch between vision and reality, spiritual world and humankind's living space, Ende relates a story of love in a pathetic and touching way.This thesis starts with the features of Michael Ende's fantasy novels, analyzing his two works with narrative theories. Through the analysis of the two works, this thesis ventures to draw the following conclusion:Ende's fantasy novels combine artfully his rich imagination and his thoughts of the reality, rendering pleasant sensation to the readers through the structure of "mirror in mirror" and at the same time forcing them to confront the problem revealed in the novels and then reflect seriously. In these two fantasy novels, the structure of "mirror in mirror" presents poignant contrast between the real world and visionary world, the adults'world and children's world. Through depreciation of the real world and adults' world and appreciation of the visionary world and children's world, the author reminds people not to lose a "poetical habitat" and their humanity in the stream of materialism. |
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