A Choice Between Chinese And Western And The Cultural Contradictory Implication Of Lao She’s Characters

Lao She, who gave his whole life to write more than a thousand works, enjoys a high reputation as "People’s Artist" in the world. These works have a wealth of meaning in terms of form, content, ideas and so on, thus exploring interest has always been attracted research community. The research for Lao She in recent ten years mainly focused on two aspects:large numbers of researchers focus on the aesthetic analysis of characters of Lao She’s works, and another group of researchers focus on the analysis of cultural implication of Lao She’s works. This paper argues that, if you want to advance the study of Lao She further, it will be necessary for us to associate the analysis of existing researches on the characters of the works with cultural implication researches together and explore cultural implication of Lao She’s works from the characters.This paper focused on through the cultural connotation analysis of many characters in his works to show the writer’s rich and complex mentality in the creation-especially Lao She’s inner conflict when faced with a choice between Chinese and western culture, and the resulting rich aesthetic implication of these characters. Different from the strong national character criticism reflected in the characters of the first generation of" the May Fourth Movement" such as Lu Xun, the characters in Lao She’s works have not only Chinese traditional virtues but also the characteristics of "the old Chinese". The characters apparently or potentially reveal a contradictory and complex psychology of Lao She, which is not only an emotional attachment on Chinese traditional morals, but also a rational survey and critique. Meanwhile, numerous characters with the "westernized color" in his works also commonly exhibit this dual contradictory colors-both with the characters of "modernity" and "civilization alienation".It apparently and potentially shows Lao She’s contradiction of the "western" modernity, for which he yearns, as well as watches out. This paper argues that the rich aesthetic implication of these characters is related to the complex contradictions of Lao She’s inner life. Meanwhile, the unique position of Lao She’s works in the history of Chinese modern literature is also closely related with this.This paper is divided into three parts to discuss. The first part, mainly makes a cultural analysis in the "modern nationhood" image under the traditional constrains, the "speculators" image who twisting the western culture, the "hesitation"image between the old and new culture. To explore Lao She’s contradiction and hard alternative when facing Chinese tradition and the western modernity and display the cultural and aesthetic reason of this kind of characters. By analyzing the images of alienated countrymen in city, returnees escaping from city and the losties between "city" and’country", part two analyses Lao She’s complex and contradictory psychology of "city", the symbolic carrier of modernity, and "country", the traditional symbolic carrier of China and displays the rich cultural implications and aesthetic characteristics of these characters. The third part, it mainly focuses on the artistic method in the shaping of the characters, analyzing Lao She’s artistic choices judging from his complex inner contradictions in art methods and expression means, ideal and reality, the characters’ language and psychological performance.