The Transcendence Of If Tomorrow Comes Over Traditional Western Revenge Literature

Contemporary American popular fiction writer Sidney Sheldon is the world’s top storyteller, and also a person who has made a world Guinness record. As the writer whose novels have been translated the most throughout the world (according to Wikipedia,51languages), Sheldon’s novel have been introduced to180countries with a total sale of more than300million copies. Not only had he earn a nomination for the Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of American and the Best Novel of the Year Award from The New York Times, but also had he achieved Tony Award, Oscar Award and Emmy Award, which are considered to be the highest degree of honor on the three stages of music, movie and TV series, respectively.Among all of Sheldon’s novels, If Tomorrow Comes is undoubtedly one of the best and has gained the most wonderful reputation. Many critics regard If Tomorrow Comes as the pinnacle of Sheldon’s creation. The book is such a hit that CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) cannot wait to pay a million dollars to pick up the film right of this book even long before Sheldon could finish his manuscript. The novel tells us a story about Tracy Whitney, a female banker who was about to get married when she learned about the news that her mother was desperately forced to commit suicide by city underworld gangs. When Tracy was trying to seek justice for her mother, she was framed into prison and suffered a lot. Tracy made plans to avenge her mother and herself by pulling out clever schemes after she was released from prison. When her vengeance was done, she found herself no longer socially accepted because of being an ex-criminal. In order to make a living, she started her professional career as a thief, but she only stole from rich and punished who deserve to be punished. What’s more, she used the stolen money to make donations and help those in great need. Gradually, she had grown into the world’s top-class thief and in that process she gained both wealth and love. In the end of the story, she retired after winning merits.The topic of revenge has attracted generations of writers and has made a long, ever-lasting presentation in western literature history. With the development of social civilization, revenge literature has also sublimated and moved into modern era together with time after going through various mental choices. Being called the female version of The Count of Monte Cristo, If Tomorrow Comes has done a wonderful job and wowed its readers to their hearts’ content. If Tomorrow Comes is like a young star rising up in western revenge literature system. The author no longer simply repeats the traditional themes of revenge, but presenting more exciting contents through its old shell. If Tomorrow Comes is written about revenge, but not just stops with revenge and contains a deeper meaning beyond revenge. This paper studies the transcendence of If Tomorrow Comes’ over the traditional revenge literature. By comparing If Tomorrow Comes with some classical revenge novels in western literary history, I summarize its transcendence over western revenge writing systems in the aspects of revenge theme, avenger image, revenge target, means of revenge, degree of revenge and geographic scope of revenge.This paper is divided into three parts: introduction, main body and conclusion. Its main contents are as follows:The first part is introduction, which involves a brief literary review and current research condition about the topic of revenge both home and abroad. I’ll explain why I choose to make research about this subject and the significance of my research.The second part is the main body, which consists four chapters:Chapter One mainly introduces the author Sidney Sheldon’s life experience and plot summary of Sheldon’s If Tomorrow Comes.Chapter Two elaborates from a subversive angel—positive energy of revenge in If Tomorrow Comes and analysis in detail how does If Tomorrow Comes surpasses those traditional revenge novels in the aspects of revenge theme, avenger image, revenge target by comparing it with classical revenge novels in western literary history.Chapter Three focuses on the concrete unfolding of revenge executing process and analysis from aspects of means of revenge, degree of revenge, and geographic scope of revenge. And conclude the transcendence of If Tomorrow Comes over traditional revenge literature on the basis of inheritance combined with the positive energy analyzed in Chapter Two.Chapter Four analyzes the reasons why If Tomorrow Comes can surpass traditional revenge literature and achieve such a huge success. With the development of times, growing spiritual needs of readers under new social background and the author’s superb writing skills, If Tomorrow Comes would inevitably surpass traditional works.The third part is conclusion part, in which I will make an overview and summarize the thesis statement of this paper and come up with some constructive suggestion: we should confirm the transcendence of If Tomorrow Comes over the traditional revenge literature, but meanwhile, we should not ignore its shortcomings and defects. In the process of reading this novel, readers should absorb the quintessence and remove the dross, get the advantages without suffering the disadvantages in order to have a reference.