Ethical Conflicts And The Way To Redemption In Viper’s Tangle

Francois Mauriac was a French famous contemporary writer, and he was productive in his life. His novels for A Kiss for the Leper, The Desert of love, Terres Desqueyroux, Viper’s Tangle and plays such as The transformation of devil, Dirty monkey, The lamb have been included by pleiade-the world classics library, which adds a touch of brilliant color into the picture of world literature. These achievements make Mauriac have occupied a certain position in France and the world’s literary arena, he not only was selected as academician of the French Academy, served as president of the French Writers Association, also won the Nobel Prize laurels, and became the winner of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1952. From familiar themes of life, Francois Mauriac takes provincial bourgeois family as his novels’creative material and background, so his works have strong local color. However, his point of view is unique, and he is good at describing the relationship between the closest, and is committed to the mining of soul.In 1952, Mauriac was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature for "the spiritual insight and artistic passion showed in the deep characterization of the drama of human life in his novels", and Anders Ostelr, Executive Secretary of the Swedish Academy, spoken highly of his tremendous achievements in the novel creation in the Award Ceremony Speech, including Viper’s Tangle. Viper’s Tangle was published in 1932, and it is, as it were, Mauriac’s best novel, but academic circles pay little attention to it. As a Family-themed novel, Viper’s Tangle inevitably presents all kinds of ethical conflicts, on this point, academia only has roughly discussed in the whole study of Mauriac’s works, and their main concern is on the conflict of the hero’s himself good and evil, by which can express human sin and writer’s concerns bout the living state of human, while the complex ethical conflicts and hero’s ideological change have not been given due attention and consideration. Therefore, based on a close reading, the article will firstly use the method of ethical literary criticism to analyze specifically the ethical conflicts and redemption road of Viper’s Tangle and to inspect ethical issues deeply and carefully and mine the great ethical significance of this novel combining with the writing’s era background and the Mauriac’s personal life experience, religious ideas.The paper consists of three parts:introduction, body and conclusion, and the main body includes three chapters.The prolegomenon part introduces Francois Mauriac and the Viper’s Tangle, the research problems, research significance and research method of this paper, summarizes the overall research situation of Francois Mauriac at home and abroad and the current research of Viper’s Tangle, and interprets several main terms of ethical literary criticism.At present, the academic study of the Viper’s Tangle is still relatively small, and this article will use the method of ethical literary criticism to analysis the ethical conflicts and the redemption road of this novel, which not only can widen application range of the method of ethical literary criticism, but also gives the classic a new interpretation at the same time.The first chapter mainly analyses the novel’s ethical conflicts, and is divided into three sections:the first section analyses the ethical conflicts between husband and wife, and the conflicts between Louis and Isa focus on feelings, children, religion and property. In this part, the analysis will launches from two aspects:"the victim and guardian", "hypocritical and sincere"; The second section analyses the ethics conflicts between father and sons, including Louis and entropy children Hubbert and Rana Fu Wei, Louis and "spiritual son" Luc, Louis and illegitimate Robert; The third section discusses Louis inner ethical conflicts, through analyzing the conflicts and struggle of good and evil, emotion and ration in Louis, this part will exposes the causes of Louis’ distorted personality.The second chapter mainly expounds the way to redemption and is divided into three sections:the first section discusses the emotional awakening between husband and wife; The second section refers to the giving love of the father; The third section discusses the recurrence of belief, revealing Louis’mental journeys about how to get rid of the ethical dilemmas from hate to love, and to achieve salvation finally.The third chapter analyzes the causes of ethics conflicts and redemptive way. This chapter is divided into two sections:the first section mainly discusses the social causes, including the impact caused by "money worship" on family ethics and ecological ethics, and the human sin and moral decay caused by belief crisis. The second section discusses the writer’s personal reasons, with Mauriac’s personal life experience, religious ideas, the part will make an in-depth and detailed investigation of the causes of ethical conflicts and salvation in the work.Using comparative method, the conclusion part will analyses the similarities and differences between Viper’s Tangle and Mauriac’s other family novels, and on these foundations, the paper will make a further discussion about the writer’s new way to solve the conflict of family ethics, and the Ethical significance of the new way in reading Mauriac’s other family novels and going out of the ethical predicament and reconstructing the ethical orderfor modern people.