The Two Different Beams Of Black Flame

During the60’s of20th century, under the special social as well as thecultural background of America, one literature genre---the black humor---has justappeared. Since then, the black humor has just became an independent school, thewriters and the works of black humor have also increased in great number, thusdrawing a lot of eyes of the researchers, finally developing into a very important rolewhich can not be neglected in the history of American literature. This essay will bedivided into four chapters. Based on the American social background of that time, thefirst chapter analyzed the root of American black humor, explained the reason why thisliterature school has appeared in the first place, then developed and finally expanded,thus to reveal the immanent drive of black humor. With the example of the famouscatch22, Chapter One has also discussed the artistic features of this literature school.Because of the strong influence of black humor, in70’s of last century this school hasbeen introduced into China, by translating at the very beginning. Since then theChinese literature has been greatly influenced by American black humor. In theChapter Two, the three stage of development and each one’s unique characteristic havebeen expounded, especially emphasis on the outstanding Chinese black humorwriter---Wang Shuo. The third chapter gave a detailed introduction about the threeartistic features of Wang Shuo’s black humor works. And the last chapter showed thecomparison between the Heller’s and Wang Shuo’s black humor, aiming to find out thesimilarity and difference.