Memory,Reconstruction And Healing:Trauma Narration In Ha Jin's War Novels

Ha Jin is one of the most successful Chinese writers in the United States.As the first generation of immigrant writers who wrote in a foreign country,his novel creation revolves around the Chinese stories that happened in the past.Most of his works reveal critical attitudes towards the traditional culture of his home country and the reality of China.Ha Jin's narrative of war is mainly embodied in two novels:War Trash and Nanjing Requiem.In both novels,Ha Jin uses the way of "recollection" to show the readers all the phenomena of war-torn beings.The thesis from the perspective of trauma theory,analyses the characters'experiences,witnesses'trauma and wound healing process in the novel,and finally reveals the hypocrisy and absurdity of the war and the distortion and destruction of human nature.The thesis is mainly divided into five parts.In the introduction,it introduces Ha Jin's life experience,general situation of his creation and research at home and abroad.In the first chapter,it carries on the introduction to elaborate the traumatic narrative theory and the influence of Ha Jin's early traumatic experience in China on his literary creation.The second chapter analyses the causes of trauma forgetting and the necessity of trauma presentation,focusing on the presentation of war trauma,and interprets and combs the war trauma suffered by the protagonists in the two novels.Chapter three,based on Ha Jin's immigration status,analyses Ha Jin's war trauma writing from the perspective of "cross-culture".Ha Jin writes in a foreign country,examines China by drawing lessons from different cultures,and deeply reflects and criticizes the politics and culture of his home country.In addition to presenting the trauma of war,Ha Jin also recorded the Chinese people's "flies and dogs" in the war environment with sharp strokes.In the face of huge tragedies,the "evil" of human nature has been constantly amplified.The last chapter analyses the healing process and its significance of war trauma and two works from the perspective of collective memory.It holds that the traumatic narrative of Waste Wars and Nanjing Requiem is a reflection and reconstruction of collective memory.