A Spacial Study Of Ba Jin’s Novels

This paper interprets Ba Jin’s novels in the light of Bashra’s domestic space,Lefebvre’s social space and psychological space,and Foucault’s theory of right space,and argues that the spacial writing in Ba Jin’s novels points to the modern construction of the concept of nationhood.The thesis explores the typical spacial imagery in Ba Jin’s novels,tries to explore Ba Jin’s creative mentality and his creative transformation from the perspective of spacial imagery and spacial transformation,and examines Ba Jin’s awareness and transmutation of ideal beliefs and individual nationhood.The space in Ba Jin’s novels ranges from the "small" home to the "big" home,presenting the displacement of physical space and the complex micro-ecological care of psychological space.The traditional house imagery of the public house,garden,and attic symbolizes the oppression of individual freedom by feudal rituals under the veil of warmth.Socio-political spaces such as the street and the newspaper house symbolize the opening up of modern public political space under the discourse of Enlightenment.The individual psychological spaces such as dreams,memories and imagination reveal the trauma caused by the unrelenting squeezing of the small characters’ living space.The hierarchical relations and cultural conflicts in the domestic space,the power relations and nation-state imagination in the social space,and the individual spiritual struggle in the psychological space reveal the light of Ba Jin’s enlightenment spirit,humanitarianism and idealism,and reflect the writer’s cultural reflection on the family,the nation and the individual.This paper follows the following five main sections for interpretation.Chapter 1: The Ritual Space of Family Order in Ba Jin’s Novels.The family house shows a corner of the characters’ souls,where blood is thicker than water,but also filled with the discipline of ritual and law for individuals.The family house is a place where the elders and youngsters are ordered,both stifling the youth and exploiting the poor.The hall was the place where the parents admonished the youth and manifested their authority.The slave room,on the other hand,rips apart the hypocrisy of the feudal family.The garden is a space of leisure in the family home,both an elegant place for youth to soothe their bodies and minds and a hiding place for corrupt parents.And with the help of the depressing attic,Ba Jin once again deepens the cultural reflection behind the family conflict.Chapter 2: The political space of the nation-state in Ba Jin’s novel.The youths leave their families,go to the streets,form newspaper houses,participate in the revolution,and enter the sickroom,constituting the displacement of physical space and the typical modern social space imagery of Ba Jin’s novels.The street is an open space for the May Fourth youth to protest against current politics,gathering many unstable factors and being a field of violence and massacre.As a tool for influencing public opinion,the newspaper house is both an open space for criticizing current problems and a group chamber for the youth to rebel against their old families and plan their exodus.Along with the deterioration of the domestic situation,Ba Jin uses the tragic image of the sickroom as a metaphor for the countrymen who are struggling for life and death in the half of the country.Chapter 3: The psychological space of the traumatic nature of characters in Ba Jin’s novels.Through dreams,memories,and imagination,the characters’ hearts and minds are riddled with holes under the check and balance of the "fate" of the spider.Through the excavation of many spatial images,the bloody and tearful panorama of the life journey of various small characters who are not in their own hands under the old system,old culture,and the era of internal and external troubles-the physical and mental tears after the shattering of their homes.The characters experience the interweaving of beautiful dreams and nightmares,visual and spiritual disorder,emotional chaos and reminiscence,and the decadence of ideals reduced to fantasies,eventually becoming physically and mentally ill or dying.With a tone of pathos,Ba Jin portrays the bitterness,tears,blood and sorrow of the little people,who share the same experience and connect the collective trauma of the nation.Chapter 4: The role and connection of the three spaces in Ba Jin’s novels.The space in Ba Jin’s novels changes from "small family" to "big family",and the interplay of physical,social,and psychological space presents the bloodline connection between the individual and the collective in a multidimensional way.In the spacial hierarchy,cultural conflicts,and the alternation of old and new,many power relations are connected,and the characters are constructed in the spacial juxtaposition.It portrays the changes of their behavior,character,psychology,perception and emotion.It also seeks to break out in the multiple spacial oppositions and deepens the cultural reflection on the family,the nation and the individual.Ba Jin’s spacial narrative and emotional transformation present his profound life experience.Chapter 5: Cultural Implications of spacial Writing in Ba Jin’s Novels.Ba Jin’s spacial writing not only carries Ba Jin’s personal ideals,but is a projection of his humanitarian and ideal beliefs.He juxtaposes enlightenment and revolutionary discourses in space in an attempt to explore the salvation of his family and country.By recreating national memories and traumas,he records the existential dilemmas and spiritual anxieties of the people of his time,and unveils the nation’s illnesses and wounds in order to induce healing.He expresses his exploration from "education for national salvation" and "revolution for national salvation" to "literature for national salvation",as well as his reflection on the modernity of the family and the country by juxtaposing nationhood and modernity in the literary imagination.In his early novels,Ba Jin’s passionism and idealism of the May Fourth Movement were abundant,but in his later novels,his concern for the family and the national state shifted to his empathy for the sorrows of individual lives,and when his ideals and beliefs collided with the reality of life,the characters were traumatized physically and mentally.While criticizing the old-style system,Ba Jin looks forward to the construction of a new ideal world.The key to the pursuit of ideal faith and the construction of a modern nation-state lies in the creative combination and transformation of nationhood and modernity.