Life Meaning Reconstructed and Its Limits

Title：Life Meaning Reconstructed and Its Limits: Dilemma of Pan Xiao in the Literature (1980-1985) （人生“意义”的重建及其限制——“‘潘晓’难题”的文学展现）

Author:

ZHU Jie（朱 杰）

PhD  2010 Dissertation     

Abstract:

This paper starts from the analysis of a letter appeared on China Youth titled So far, So narrow：My Road of Life on 5,1980, with the pseudo-name Pan Xiao. Tracing back her life experience in Mao’s China, Pan announced in this letter explicitly her disillusionment about the idealism she once embraced whole-heartedly. While at the same time, she is influenced by her structure of psyche which is deeply shaped by the very idealism she now does not believe. Thus comes the dilemma of Pan Xiao: on the one hand, the idealism of Mao’s time becomes notorious, and on the other hand, Pan is very thirsty for some new ideal for substitution, but what kind of ideal?

This paper takes the dilemma of Pan Xiao as a motif, and traces the different solutions for it in the novels between 1980 and 1985, which mainly represent the youth problem in industrial, military, rural areas.

Contents:

Introduction：The Dilemma of Pan Xiao

1   The Crisis of the Mentor

1.1       A Mentor in Predicament

1.2      The End of Old Ways

2         Everyday Life and the Management

2.1      The Parameters of Everyday Life

2.2     ‘Bros’, Management and the Working Class

3         Heroes without Roots

3.1      The Last Commissar

3.2     Heroes without Roots

4         Knowledge and the End of Rural China

4.1      The Ideal Lost

4.2     What Kind of Knowledge

5         A Loner and His Discontent

5.1      Wang Runzi and His Problem

5.2     The Emergence of An Loner

Conclusion From ‘Idealism’ to ‘Cynicism’