Death Writing In Jinlian Ma’s Novels

Death writing is the writer’s personal and motivated option under the influence of one’s ethnic identity. Since Jinlian Ma is a traditional female writer of Hui ethnicity, her literary creation is subtly affected by her deep-seated religious beliefs and ethnic consciousness. Reviewing all the novellas of Ma, she tirelessly constructs a chain of death incidents in which she has been elaborating on her equal, holy and detached visions of death and creating her thorough aesthetics of death with all the related images. This thesis tries to dig out the value of Ma’s novels and inspires people to realize the limitless possibilities in this limited life.The introduction part includes Ma’s novels and their research status, the researching value and writing logic of this thesis.Chapter one discourses on the original sources of Ma’s death consciousness from three aspects. Firstly, it comes from Ma’s unconscious aggregation of her primitive psychological experiences. Secondly, her brother’s death gives her the most direct experience of death. Thirdly, inspired by her beliefs in Islamic religion, she subconsciously accumulates greater death consciousness, which influences her writing a lot.Chapter two narrates the main types of Ma’s death writhing, including the lonesome old men who are awaiting deathrthe untimely death of young kids, women who are suppressed to death in a patriarchal society, and migrant workers who are lost and dead in a money-worshipping society. By analyzing these death incidents, Ma puts those serious social issues hidden behind the death in the spotlight, reveals the sadness of human’s uncertain lifetime and triggers out people’s attention and rethinking.Chapter three mainly studies Ma’s vision of death. Out of her religious consciousness and emotions, Ma extends to readers an equal, holy and detached vision of death. While encouraging people to bravely confront death and transcend its threat, this vision also has realistic implications of significance.Chapter four elucidates the value of death writing in Ma’s novels from the perspectives of aesthetic value and realistic value. The images of snowflakes, teardrops and tombs create a pathetically beautiful atmosphere of death, which additionally underline the aesthetics of the writer’s death writing. By constantly inquiring its realistic value, clarifying and reflecting on its writing value and living out the true or authentic state, Ma calls on people to confront and transcend death, and realizes their ultimate goals.Conclusion part generalizes the meanings of death writing in Ma’s novels. Writing on death is not a negative way of regarding death, but a special way of respecting life, and it will greatly inspire modern people to transcend its threat. However, there are some limitations in Ma’s writing, for example, it still bears imprints of some local well-known writers’influences, its narrative themes are limited, some works lack in deep thought, and some writing skills are needed to improve upon.