Research On The Image In Yan Geling’s Novel

Yan Geling is one of the most famous female writers in American Chinese literature. She has been devoting herself to literary creation for many years and created a lot of outstanding works that mirrors the Cultural Revolution and life of immigrants. Using multiple images is one of the characteristics in her works, she wields numerous images in her works and their implications are rich and varied, therefore, a world consists of abundant images has been established. Based on such a breakthrough point, this paper expounds and analyzes the representative images in Yan Geling’s novels and tries to seize the essence of these images.This article comprises four chapters:The first chapter is Introduction:firstly, this paper defines the concept of image, summarizes the Chinese and foreign image theory. Then introduces domestic and overseas research status on Yan Geling’s novels and point out the feasibility of researching images in her novel and indicates the innovative points of this research.The second chapter lists out the images:in this part, the author chooses four representative images such as breast, plait, red clothes and orange to analyze and reveal their deeper meaning:the breast is the metaphor that symbolizes the Cultural Revolution and patriarchy’s damage to women’s body; the plait represents the citizens’slavishness under racial discrimination; the red clothes represent Yan’s verification and insistence for her own cultural identity; the orange exposes the selfishness in human nature.The third chapter discusses the features of the image’s application:the article firstly introduces the image’s application, besides the above-mentioned four images, this chapter also introduces several images like white snake, moon, red skirt and cafe. Then it explains three characteristics of the image’s application such as rich cultural implication, vivid color and affluent narrative function.The fourth chapter probes into the causes of the image from the writer’s Cultural Revolution memory in her childhood, her immigration experience to the limitation of her orientalism and female consciousness.