- 期刊
A Jungian Study of the Characterization of Manna and Shuyu in Ha Jin's Waiting
並列摘要
Ha Jins' famous novel, ”Waiting” (等待 1999), which won the National Book Award and PEN/Faulkner Award, is the most successful and important work of his. Nowadays, ”Waiting” has become a norm when one intends to understand more about China.Most reviews considered this novel a great love story by praising Manna's insistence of love and deploring Shuyu's situation of being forsaken by her husband. Some critical reviews concentrated on discussing how the historical background influences the male character Lin Kong's mind, and makes him become a man disable to love. Moreover, numerous relevant discussions of ”Waiting” centered on blaming China's Cultural Revolution and its traditional background affliction. Under the political, social and moral restrictions, the lovers Manna and Lin Kong are prevented from consummating their relationship. However, even if the protagonists Manna in ”Waiting” is characterized as a traditional stereo type, a single nurse who falls in love with a bookish, married doctor Lin Kong at their army hospital, meanwhile waits to be with her lover for good over 17 years waiting, in addition, Shuyu, as an ugly, ignorant, and unappealing wife, still waits her husband's return patiently and endures his every year torture on severing their marriage, as a matter of fact, out of sight of structure, as a compliant wife, Shuyu doesn't submit to her husband's renouncement , as well as Manna doesn't surrender herself to social restriction. By applying lung's theoretic al approach, the related question s about how the two female characters can survive under oppressive system, how they are capable of upholding their own subjectivity under the traditional society, and even more after suffering various difficulties, how they can sustain their resolution instead of giving up, all toward s one possible answer, that is, their persistent capacity of transferring their frustration into positive energy.To demonstrate more precisely how their psychological transference performed, Jung's ”persona” and ”shadow” theories will be mainly applied. Based on Jung's definition, ”...What ego-consciousness rejects becomes shadow; what it positively accepts and identifies with and absorbs into itself becomes a part of itself and of the persona,” that is, persona is out in public in the light while shadow is hidden away and reclusive in the dark. By Jung's theory, all the analysis of the questions raised above will be elaborated clearly, and further, with the discussion of transformation of Manna's and Shuyu's persona and shadow. Their psychological process will be conveyed as well.