Trauma,Death And Redemption

By analyzing Tong Weige’s works: My Dead Grandfather,The Age without Trauma,Northwest Rain and Fairy Tales with his other works as references,this thesis,based on the cut-in points of "trauma,death and redemption",discusses how Tong understands the history of his family and of the Taiwan island from the aspects of trauma and death,try to clarify the complicated interactions between time and space,between life and death,and between memory and forgetting in his works,and then look deeper into social and historical changes in Taiwan.In his novels,Tong tells the family stories of staying and departing,dying and resurrecting,losing and finding,and remembering and forgetting in his hometown of Wanli Township,Taibei,whether melancholy or not,which contain profound historical meanings and philosophical thinking.Time and memory,trauma and death,history and reality constitute multiple aspects of Tong’s novels.Since it is to recall the the history of Taiwan and his family,pain must be touched upon.Therefore,traumatic narratives in Tong’s novels,especially traumatic memories,can be worth our exploration.Memory is a resistance to forgetting.Traumatic memories open a way to recall the family history and reveal the metaphorical relationship between reality and memories.Death is also the core theme that Tong focuses on.The writing of ghosts not only follows the traditional way of ghost narrative in modern and contemporary literature,but also has its distinct feature which differs from that in Taiwanese works of the post-60 s and post-80 s.The image of his dead father covers the majority of the novel,which vividly highlights the image of "abandoned village".Villagers don’t perceive death as mournful or significant,and they even imagine and look forward to the arrival of death.After the trauma and pain caused by people’s death,Tong does not forget to redeem these bottom people.Through pursuit for freedom with "waste",the exile and "forgiveness" of maternal love,the fiction and writing of self,and the redemption of folk culture,bottom people,little intellectuals and even the author finally have their minds settled.By discussing the trauma,death and redemption in tong weige’s novels,this paper intends to show that his works are books of grief and redemption.Both the real people and the dead are seeking spiritual freedom and trying to be themselves in the limited space and time.Also,everyone talks directly with the destiny,revealing the infinite inquiry and reflection on life.