Ba Jin's "home" With Shimazaki Fujimara Digging Holes In The "home"

In the early1920s, both Chinese and Japanese writers produced many works in thetheme of family, with the most remarkable going to Family by Ba Jin and the same titledwork by Shimazaki Toson. Both of them are the master work of the writer, which broughtabout great influence at that time. In spite of the difference in writer and publication time,there are lots of resemblancesbetween the two works, which arouses people’s interest in conducting comparative study.The thesis analyses major characters, reasons for creating, autobiographical hints aswell as the writer’s viewpoint in the two works by applying close reading and parallelstudy.The thesis is composed of five chapters. Chapter One briefly introduces lifeexperience and literary activities of the writers before they created the works, maincontents of the two works, as well as the state of comparative studies in China and Japan.Chapter Two and Three carried out comparative analysis for the main characters andsummarized their status meaning. In the traditional family, the eldest son is the guardianand the younger one is the awakened while the young female is the downtrodden. Parentsare the ruler who no longer enjoys dominance and the wastrel fastened the declining of thetraditional family. Chapter Four explores the incentive for creating the two works andattributed it to their response to the call of the time as well as the striking by French writerZolaesque. The viewpoint of the writer and the autographical hint are explored in ChapterFive. The difference in viewpoints can be ascribed to their unique understanding of therelationship between family and society while the root cause lies in the difference in theliterary traditions of the two countries. Both writers expressed their life experience andemotional memories in their work, but based on the purpose of creating, Ba Jin made someremoulding while Shimazaki Toson remained faithful to the true memoir.