From Hope To Desperation: An Analysis Of Space In Waiting

Ha Jin is recognized by many critics and readers as one of the most popular Chinese American authors.Since the publication of Waiting,it has gained a great popularity both in readers and critics.Among the researches on the novel,there are a lot of interpretations upon the protagonist Lin Kong.However,they all ignore the relationships between Lin Kong’s living experience and space,which influences his life deeply.This thesis probes into the space elements of the novel to reveal how they affect the hero’s life with the help of Henri Lefebvre’s and Michel Foucault’s theories.Lefebvre’s theory of criticism of everyday life offers a great help on analyzing the formation of the hero’s lack of mutual everyday life space.Foucault’s theories of heterotopias,power,and knowledge also assist in explaining the hero’s living condition,when he is trapped in a long time waiting.The three main chapters of this thesis echo with Lin Kong’s three main stages of his life.In the first chapter,the real causes of Lin Kong’s lack of mutual everyday life space are disclosed through the analysis of his everyday life.The second chapter analyzes how Lin Kong has been temporarily consoled by heterotopias after his attempts at divorce fail again and again,when his hopes gradually fades away.The last chapter discuses how Lin Kong finally awakes from his eighteen-year waiting.In the space of signs,powers,and disciplines,his intrinsic abilities of love has been deprived by the space.The space he pursued has already lost its charm and meaning so that what he has waited is a meaningless life with the cost of his youth.This thesis concludes that everyday life space is both the carrier of the new referential system,and the controlled object of it.For human beings,to be aware of the operating rules of the space is the only way to release ourselves psychologically from its imprisonment.