On The Comic Strip Adaptation Of Ba Jin’s Novel The Family

As the opening work of Ba Jin’s "Riptide Trilogy",the novel The Family,with its distinctive "anti-feudal" theme,criticizes the sins of traditional feudal patriarchy and has inspired countless young people to walk out of their families.It has also entered the canon of Chinese literature.Since the 1940 s,Ba Jin’s novel The Family has been adapted into various visual texts.Comic strips,as a form of art that combines language and images,have played an important role in the classicization of the novel.This thesis,taking time as a clue,attempts to generalize the artistic characteristics of the comic book adaptation of The Family in different periods from the perspectives of ideological themes,character images,painting art,and other aspects,based on an overall review of the comic book adaptation of Ba Jin’s novel The Family.Meanwhile,it also probes into production mechanisms,social trends of thought,and other factors.The thesis is divided into three parts in addition to the introduction:The first chapter analyzes the adaptation of The Family as a comic strip in the Republic of China.The adaptation in this period began in the 1940 s.Taking the "New Enlightenment" as the starting point,this chapter inspects the multiple factors that led to the adaptation of The Family into comic strips in the 1940 s.The comic strips of The Family realized the value of the "New Enlightenment" in terms of popularizing the content and disseminating it to the masses in the form of popular narratives of the combination of text and pictures.At the same time,the comic strip The Family not only met the realistic needs of revolution and salvation in terms of ideology and content,but also brewed a sensory and visual revolution in its painting art itself.Chapter 2 analyzes the fission and rebirth of the comic strip The Family in the historical context of the "Seventeen Years" period after the founding of New China.The comic strip adaptation of the novel The Family continued the "producer’s art" and strengthened the value orientation and adaptation strategy of "serving the workers,peasants and soldiers".The main thread is the marriage narrative,which establishes a narrative logic consistent with ideological norms and the aesthetic interests of the people.The characterization highlights the class and revolutionary nature of the characters,while the creation of scenes focuses on the metaphorical color and spiritual construction of space.Chapter 3 focuses on the adaptation of the comic strips of The Family since the New Age.This thesis argues that the comic strip adaptations of The Family since the New Age have inherited the spiritual connotation of the May Fourth Movement’s emphasis on the liberation of individuality,highlighting the authenticity of characters and the beauty of humanity,while the comic strip works also embody a cultural mentality of discovering and remembering the May Fourth Movement through pictorial narratives.Through the artistic reproduction of May Fourth scenes,the comic strips of The Family restore the memory of the times and observe the relationship between history,space and people.Finally,the viewer’s subject position is restored through the setting of two viewing perspectives: "seeing" and "being seen".