Exploration of Frog and Light in August in the View of Modernity and

Post-Modernity

Zhengying Wu

English Department, Anhui Sanlian College, Hefei, Anhui, China

642918756@qq.com

Keywords: Modernity and Post-Modernity, Yan Mo, Faulkner, Frog, Light in August.

Abstract: The purpose of this study was to illustrate in comparative literature that Modernity and Post-modernity were

united, and this unified theory manifested people’s ideological attitude and behavior mode. This paper

explored Frog and Light in August in the view of unified theory “modernity and post-modernity”. By

horizontal comparing the interweaving of modernity and post-modernity in these two masterpieces, it

disclosed synthesized historical forces, writer’s subject consciousness and cultural mentality behind language.

The study shows us Modernity and Post-modenity cannot be separated completely.

1 INTRODUCTION

Theory of modernity and post-modernity is an

important node of knowledge web, and also the

significant viewpoint with which we observe and

unstand our time we live in. Some scholars are in

favor of “dissevering relationship” between them,

believing “modernity is the situation of unfinished

modernization, and post-modernity correspongs to

finishing modernization” (Fengzhen Wang, 2003),

that is to say, modernity and post-modernity are

two separately phases appeared in turn during the

capitalism development. Other scholars, while,

proclaim the “inheritance” between them. They

have essential relationship that post-modernity is

bred in modernity itself from the beginning, and

absorbing the “nutrition” from modernity, and

post-modernity is going on continually deducing

and surpassing. Some of them make it

unequivocally clear that it still belongs to

modernity scope nowadays, convincing modernity

is an “unfinishing project” (Habermas, 2004).

We approve of “inheritance” between them.

The essential feature of Modernity is human

beings’ absolute conquering nature, i.e., subjects

conquer objects. Its basic concept derives from

rational Enlightenment spirit. Different from

sensibility and will, rationality is an ability,

manifesting itself very often as thinking,

introspection, logic judgment and reasoning

ability. We can say, the primary spirit of

rationality is introspection, critique and doubt.

Habermas consider modernity’s formation as the

course of “self-understanding and

self-confirmation”. This course, which began from

Enlightenment period, shapes its modern

reasonable pattern in the way of rationalim.

Giddens utilizes self-reflection to define this

course, pointing out that self-reflection is the

fundamental risk of modernity. People construct

future society and culture according to their own

understanding and designing of modernity and

this construction itself is full of uncertainty.

In the following parts, we analyze Yan Mo’s

Frog and Faulkner’s Light in August with the

above clarifed theory, grasp more macroscopically

and vividly these two masterpieces’ literary and

cultural characterization, outline the multiple

historical united forces behind the context, and

discriminate inner motivation hidden behind the

phenomenon and explore writers’ values and

cultural psychology.

2 INTERPRETING FROG WITH

MODERNITY AND

POST-MODERNITY

Yan Mo is the only literary Nobel prize owner in

China up to now. In one of his representative

works Frog, Yan Mo thinks about rationally and

274

Zhengying W.

Exploration of Frog and Light in August in the View of Modernity and Post-Modernity.

DOI: 10.5220/0006448902740276

In ISME 2016 - Information Science and Management Engineering IV (ISME 2016), pages 274-276

ISBN: 978-989-758-208-0

objectively Chinese family planning policy. On

one hand, he wants to convey government rational

politics through context, just as he says

“delivering children in new way indicates

scientific modernity as well as the beginning of

national will to control traditional concept of birth.

Henceforth, breeding, an individual act of nature,

is one part of the process of national

modernization”(Hui Li, 2015); and on the other

hand, he discloses people’s helpless thinking and

endless struggle, expressing objectively his

question to humanity behind national policy and

his rethinking and doubting in this resolution. We

must realize that in China with large population

family planning policy plays an important role

during the whole process of modernization from

early poor founding period to prosperous present.

The formation of Chinese modernity is also a

course of “self-understanding and

self-confirmation”. This course is shaped in form

of rationalism such as population policy, and this

designing and construction itself is full of

uncertainty, doubting, critique and self-reflection.

Frog is a typical reflective work. In harvest

time, aunt Xin Wan saved lots of pregnant women

and babies with scientific method, and became “a

talented near-mythic obstetrician” (Yan Mo, 2012).

She believed in science and advocated equality of

men and women. In delieving, “she experienced

pure human beings’ happiness”(Yan Mo, 2012).

At the end of 1965, the first climax of family

planning policy began. Aunt, a firm executor of

this policy with strong Party spirit, set off a

vigorous “male ligation”compaign with staff of

Family Planning Office, and in the compaign they

pulled down houses of relatives or neighbors to

capture illegal pregnant women. She fervently

believed in that “the birth rate must be reduced at

all costs, and this was also a great contribution of

China to the whole world.”(Yan Mo, 2012). In

stark contrast, Aunt was almost in collapse when

she was more than 70 years old at the end of 90s.

She held that the shout of frogs in the evening was

the cry of thousands of newborn babies, and

therefore, she consecrated 2,800 clay children

made by her husband to reappear babies she had

aborted before, kneeling, praying and attempting

to use this way to make up for her heart guilt. “I”

in the novel was always in the course of

self-understanding, self-confirming and

self-reflection. For example, sympathy and respect

towards Gan Wang showed “my” praise of human

beings’ pure love. When “I” was facing hundreds

of babies’ pictures, “I” felt the most solemn

feeling in the wold —— love of life. Along with

the pursuit of love was reflection and complete

loss: “I felt I was a rotton wood floating on the

surface of water, and went straight ahead only

when someone gave me a push.”(Yan Mo, 2012),

and “it’s not a social problem, but a problem of

myself”(Yan Mo, 2012).

In northeast of Gaomi, “frog” symbolizes

strong vitality and reproductive capacity. Some

heroes in this novel such as Dan Wang, Renmei

Wang and “Little lion”, just like frogs, were eager

for life breeding, showing their worship and praise

of life. This is also a strong embodiment of

human-oriented idea. Meanwhile, Frog presented

the ugly aspects of society and corrupted soul of

people destroyed by money. In the latter part of

the novel, the big bullfrog statue at the gate of

Bullfrog Farm and the Farm’s substantive

activities——Surrogate Center unfolded money’s

corrosion on human nature, intellectuals’

confusion in modern society and the distortion of

people’s birth concept. All these presented strong

ridicule and irony in postmodern literature.

3 INTERPRETING LIGHT IN

AUGUST WITH MODERNITY

AND POST-MODERNITY

Faulkner, also a Nobel prize owner, has great

influence on Yan Mo. Most of his masterpieces

advocate tolerance, rationality, sympathy and

understanding, and meanwhile show modern

people’s alienation, loneliness and nothingness

which just are distinct menifestation of modernity

and post-modernity. There are two main clues in

Light in August

——

one is story of Lena Grove,

and the other is story of Jo Kristmas. Lena’s story

and Jo’s story are interwoven, the former at the

beginning and the end of the novel and the latter

throughout the middle of the whole novel.

Lena was a woman of firmness and

stubbornness, and she often walked slowly,

leisurely with big belly and unruffled calm to look

for her “husband”, believing “It’must not be

difficult to find baby’s father”(Faulkner, 2015).

On the way she was well treated by passers-by.

Superficially Byron thought human beings were

nothing, and “ I, she and all other folks involved

in were all only words without any

meanings ”(Faulkner, 2015). However, he was

always pursuing helpness and happiness he could

give others, which just proved the meaning of

human beings’ existance. It’s easy to find the

repetition rate of the words

Exploration of Frog and Light in August in the View of Modernity and Post-Modernity

275

Exploration of Frog and Light in August in the View of Modernity and Post-Modernity

275

“calm/sober/quiet/still” was so high, and

throughout the whole story, except for Jo Kristmas,

there are full of rational and reasonable figures,

such as yellow haired woman, the former waitress,

Byron, Lena, Hightower, Miss Burton, and foster

parents, etc..

Jo Kristmas was lonely very much, because he

belonged to neither the white nor the black, only

drifting between two races. He rejected the blacks

instinctively and yearned for whites’ leisure life,

just as it said in the novel “he tried to breathe in

blacks’ smell, deep and inscrutable thought and

temperament, and then breathe out intentionally

whites’ blood, thought and

temperament”(Faulkner, 2015). But unfortunately

from his dark childhood, he was branded as “black

- white bastard”, and even Brown who should

have been his friend so misunderstood and

disregarded him. The changing trajectory of his

short life was as follows: ignorant——confusecd

and uneasy ——resentful, angry, indifferent,

despaired, irritable, hostile and resisted ——

going astray and falling into the abyss step by step.

His road of life was just like the cold insensible

street, and “his experience and feeling in each

phase were all nothing”(Faulkner, 2015). Being

lonely for long time let him torure himself, treat

the “passion” of love between Miss Burton and

him with indifference, and take cold revenge on

everyone who loved, cared for and depended on

him. On him we cannot find rationality, but the

intense emotion, catharsis beyond reason and self

doubt and negation.

In a word, on one hand, the author transmited

completely opposite information: Lena was active,

optimistic, calm, strong, self-confident, and

people around her were also kind and helpful, but

Kristmas was contrarily unrested, puzzled,

doubtful, negative and the world around him was

full of indifferent people; on the other hand, we

can find reasonable and high-spirited modernity

and negative and vacant post-modernity

simutaneously existed in main body of the novel,

Kristmas’s story, presenting characters of both

sides vividly through variety of figures.

4 COPYRIGHT FORM

Zhengying Wu, August 25,2016

5 CONCLUSION

Here we compare Yan Mo’s Frog and Faulner’s

Light in August without noting which one is better,

but intending to stress the common characters of

the times and spirit. In the horizontal comparison

of masterpieces written by two writers in different

time and countries but with similar materials, it’s

not difficult for us to see the pursuit of rationality

and equality in the modern order and clearer

modernity itself’s reflection and doubt towards the

above spirits. As for the relationship of the three

aspects of humanistic discourse “language, world

and awareness”, Spewack emphasized that we

apperceived the world and awareness via language,

that is to say, we analyze how were the world and

awareness presented through words. Factually,

exploring the externality of modernity and

post-modernity in this crisscrossing

three-dimension humanistic world, we can find

writers’ questioning the meaning of life and the

foundation of existence, touch social production,

awareness and alienation, and arouse further

thinking about freedom, active subjectivity, and

unity and difference among subjects.



This paper is the result of the project research.

Name of the projects:

Comprehensive Reform of English Major

(2013zy086); A Comparative Study of Mo Yan and

Faulkner's Works from the Perspective of Modern

and Post modernity

(sk2014a245); Discussion on the

Path of Constructing the System of Literary Words

with Chinese characteristics in the Comparison of

Literature ——Mo Yan and Faulkner's Classical

Works as Examples

REFERENCES

Faulkner, 2015. Light in August, Yilin Translation

Publishing House. Beijing, 1

edition.

Fengzhen Wang, 2003. Cultural Studies Interviewl, China

Social Sciences Press. Beijing, 1st edition.

Habermas, 2004. The Philosophical Discourse of

Modernity, Yilin Translation Publishing House.

Beijing, 1

edition.

Hui Li, 2015. Guilt and Redemption in Yan Mo's Works.

Journal of Zibo Normal College.

Yan Mo, 2012. Frog, Writers Publishing House. Beijing,

edition.

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