| Celeste Ng is a contemporary Chinese-American writer,a second-generation immigrant from Hong Kong,and a graduate of Harvard University.She spent six years writing her debut novel,Everything I Never Told You which rose to fame as soon as it was published.In 2014,she was honored with the Amazon Best Book of the Year Award;the PBS Best Book of the Year Award and so on.Everything I Never Told You begins with the death of the main character Lydia,which is extremely suspenseful.The novel mainly narrates the identity dilemma and survival dilemma faced by James Lee,a mixed-race family,and describes the obedience and resistance of the characters in the dilemma,which is worth pondering.Since its publication,the novel has received a great deal of attention from scholars at home and abroad.Most scholars have studied the themes of trauma,growth,identity construction,feminism,and narrative strategy.Therefore,it is essential to have further research on this novel.In The Birth of Tragedy,Nietzsche first put forward two basic concepts of Nietzsche’s aesthetics: Apollonian spirit and Dionysian spirit.Nietzsche said that the Apollonian spirit is the state of the dream and the phenomenal world,in which people get short-term joy and beautify their existence.Under the spirit of Apollonian,everyone is an artist,and people feel that life is worth living in the beautiful dreams they weave.But the illusory nature of dreams makes people wake up in dreams and face the real world.Dionysian spirit is a state of drunkenness,which means the perfect integration of people with the origin of the world after the collapse of the principle of individualization.The essence of “drunkenness” is the exuberance and strength of vitality,and this powerful force comes from self-transcendence.After seeing the nature of the world clearly,people get ecstasy in the real sense,realize self-awakening and self-return.Nietzsche’s aesthetic thought is to make people look at life from an aesthetic point of view.Although there are many frustrations in the road of life,as long as people regard life as a kind of artistic survival,the rough road will eventually reach the starry sky.Nietzsche’s aesthetic thought is also Nietzsche’s philosophy of life.Although life is full of suffering,people should not be afraid.People need to beautify their lives in dreams and face difficulties in intoxication so as to save themselves.Based on the Apollonian spirit and Dionysian spirit in Nietzsche’s aesthetics,this thesis analyzes the Apollonian spirit and Dionysian spirit of the three protagonists in Everything I Never Told You.The three protagonists weave their own beautiful dreams under the spirit of Apollonian,which makes them find the meaning of survival in this painful life,but the illusion of the dream makes their dream vanish.At this time,the Dionysian spirit of the three protagonists plays a role.Under the Dionysian spirit,they destroy the principle of individualization and realize the harmonious symbiosis between people and society,thus realizing self-salvation and self-return.People live actively in the dream state of the Apollonian spirit.In the drunkenness state of Dionysian spirit,people recognize the essence of life,discover the true self,and realize self-salvation. |
