Guarding the Pure Land of the Heart—A Comparison of Outlooks on Life in Walden and Zhuangzi

Zhuangzi is the masterpiece of Zhuangzi, and Walden is the masterpiece of Henry David Thoreau. This paper intends to study the similarities of Zhuangzi’s and Thoreau’s outlooks on life by analyzing Thoreau’s origin with Taoism and the absorption from Taoism in Walden. By making a large amount of analysis and comparison of the texts in these two works, the paper comes to such a conclusion: both Thoreau and Zhuangzi advocate to simplify people’s material life and to seek voluntary poverty; they are willing to enjoy the solitude and pursue the spiritual independence and freedom; they prefer to return to nature, live harmoniously with nature and therefore reach the realm of"unity of heaven and humanity". They pay more attention to human existence and their spiritual state. In the complicated modern society, people devote themselves to seeking a materially rich life. However, they do not attach enough importance to spiritual richness. As a result, the whole human society is facing a serious spiritual crisis in modern times. Thoreau’s and Zhuangzi’s outlooks on life can lead people to go through various difficulties of life and guard the pure land of the heart.     

From "living dead" to "reviving after death"——An Interpretation of The Dead from Gabriel’s Epiphany

James Joyce is one of the greatest pioneers of Modern novel history.The Dead is the most famous story in his early short story collection Dubliners,and is widely recognized as one of the finest short stories in the English language.This study tries to analyze the hero Gabriel’s mind change:from "living dead" to "reviving after death" from his epiphany,indicating that there is merely a delicate line between the two:death is the end of life as well as the beginning of a new life for death actually carries within itself a new life.     

Narrative Time in Alice Munro’s Short Stories

Alice Munro is a well-known contemporary Canadian writer.She departs from the traditional linear development but employs a seemingly random narrative line as a structural device in her story-telling.In the five short stories,"Material","Walk er Brothers Cowboy","The Moons of Jupiter","Miles City,Montana"and"Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell you",Mun ro manipulates the use of disconnected narrative time to deal with rites of passage.Free from the conventional time schemes,she expresses her vision in multiple themes and leaves the story open for readers.     

Alice Walker’s Womanism in Meridian

Meridian is one of Alice Walker’s early work. It tells a story that happened in the American south during the 1960 s and early 70s’. It describes the life of the main character, Meridian Hill, a black woman from a southern town, who got out of the oppression of white society, and ends up in participate in Civil Rights Movement. The paper firstly illustrates the soul of womanism—anti-sexism, anti-racism, sisiterhood as well as the maternity love, then analyzes how these theories permeated into the novel—Meridian. The paper paid attention to the function of this novel on the improvement of Alice Walker’s womanism.In proving that womanism not only permeates into Meridian, but also improved womanism from many perspectives, it comes to the conclusion that Meridian is a novel to improve Alice Walker’s womanism, it serves as the good novel to highlight the African Culture, and made a great contribution for the encouragement of black women to seek for freedom in the society.     

On the Conflict between Rationality and Emotion in Seize the Day

Saul Bellow’work mainly describes the human who cannot find the standpoint in American society, and they dangled between the ideal and the reality, insisting the belief of love. Seize the Day presents a several-hour experience of a middle-aged man who had lost his job, was estranged from his wife and children, and deserted by his father. With the double writing methods of narrative and recollection, the author reveals thriftily how individual was threatened by social prejudice and the important position of money. He extremely pays attention to the conflict between emotion and rationality to show people’s anxiety and contradiction in today’s America.     

花季故事

Almost everyone at some point in their life thinks about running away from home.Maybe the pressure fromschool and parents gets to be too much.Some teens run away to escape family problems,such as fightingbetween parents,or to escape abuse.Many think they can find a better life on their own.But the reality is that mostend up in far worse situations than the ones they left behind.Running away doesn’t solve your problems-it justmakes things worse.Teens living on the streets are easy targets for people who exploit them by forcing them tosell drugs or become prostitutes.Without the support of family,there’s no one to turn to,and that's when life can     

Hawthorne's Short Stories:a Journey to Explore Evil

Hawthorne was a great writer who reminds us of human limitations.He called his tales "allegories of the heart." Hawthorne’s allegories are stories of how pride and isolation frustrate our capacity for love and sympathy.Isolation or "alienation" is Hawthorne’s principal theme and problem,and loss of contact with reality is the ultimate penalty he envisions.Therefore,reading Hawthorne’s stories is a journey to explore human being’s evil.     

A Review of Japanese Film Rashomon

Kurosawa’s Rashomon combines two Japanese folk stories into a tale that explores,from a focal point of the ruined Rashomon temple near Kyoto,the nature of trust,of truth,and the unimpressive reality of human nature.The film reveals the most ominous aspect of human nature that is often full of unconscious prejudice,contradictory and hypocrisy.Kurosawa’s distinc tive cinematography,precise close-ups,bold editing,soundtrack,multiple perspectives and long periods of silence,all of which are pivotal to his aesthetic,combine to make this film uniquely filmatic and captivating.However,Rashomon brought Kurosawa both the recognition from the West and the controversy in his native country.     

Psychoanalysis and Symbolism——on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown

Nathaniel Hawthorne,a 19th-century American writer of novels and short stories,is considered an important representative of Puritanism;symbolism and romanticismin American literature.He was imbued with an inquiring imagination,a meditativemind,and an unceasing interest in the ambiguity of man’s being.He was interestedin the lonely and dark side of man,and in the man’s need to look into his own soul.Throughout his 1ife,he wrote many works which espoused the complexities and senseof guilt of the human being.On first perusal of his tales and romances,one cannot     

A Review of Robert Frost’s Poem:The Road Not Taken

The Road Not Taken is one of the Frost’ s classic poems in the collection Mountain Interval.The poem betrays the poet’ s deep thought about life philosophy and helplessness towards reality.From the perspectives of content,metaphor,image etc.the writing skills and significant connotation are discussed in this paper in order to help readers to have a better understanding about this poem as well as the artistic techniques the author employed to elaborate the life wisdom through image and common settings.     

Being Emotionally Independent Instead of Suffering——A Feminist Analysis of "How I Finally Lost My Heart"

"How I Finally Lost My Heart" is a short story written by Doris Lessing,the winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize in literature.Unlike her novels,Doris Lessing’s many short stories are less mentioned or studied by Chinese researchers and scholars,especially "How I Finally Lost My Heart".Therefore,this paper is intended to analyze this short story from the feminist perspective,and attempts to show the exact process of women’s emotional independence as well as highlight the writer’s deep concern on women’s thorough liberation.     

Similarity between Joyce and His Hero Gabriel:Comment on The Dead

James Joyce’s short story "The Dead was one of the most popular short stories in Modern English Literature.To a certain degree,the hero Gabriel is the maturity Joyce.Gabriel’s epiphany to life and death in the Christmas midnight is also the author’s "the adventures of the mind".The paper attempts to explain the similarities between Gabriel and Joyce in terms of their complex national sentiments,political views and thei r relationship with their own wife.It also analysis the device of symbolism used in the short story.     

STRUGGLE FOR A "ZERO ZONE"——Women’s Plight Situation in The Little Foxes

The little foxes, Lillian Hellman’s most popular piece of drama, is a cynical play which concerns with family greed and revenge. Analyzed from various critical perspectives, The Little Foxes is most prominently studied on her political viewpoint. Here this paper is intended to study it from the aspect of women’s position in the drama, or more concretely, in that society by the analyzing of the two main women characters: Birdie and Regina, to reveal that whichever kind of life a woman living in the early twentieth chose to live, she would never be "successful".     

Idealism and Reality,history and poem:The Journey as Polyphonic Form in History of the Soul

In the present paper the approach of formalism was adopted to analyze Zhang Chengzhi’ s work History of the Soul.According to the analysis to its form selection,unique style,the speaker’ s voice and the symbol,it is proved that a proper form and literary experience function to each other.And a conclusion was drawn that this work both contains a fantasy in reality and a reality in history.It is a journey of the author’ s soul,a real fiction.     

A Comparative Study of Joyce’s A Little Cloud&Woolf’s The Mark on the Wall

The paper analyzes two stories, Joyce’s A Little Cloud and Woolf’s The Mark on the Wall, to make a comparison between "epiphany" and "moment of importance", two major techniques in the stream of consciousness. Both are produced by the impact from the external reality and focus on the emotional and psychological processes, yet there exist three major differences between them.     

Symbolism in Alice Walker's "Everyday Use"

Alice Walker’s "Everyday Use" is a story about the use and reuse of the concept of heritage.Through analyzing the symbols of quilts and the churn,the author is in an attempt to expore the heritage passed down from generations.     

A Conflict of Life Styles Embodied in Family Relations: A Psychological Study of Mother

Mother in Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg,Ohio is a typical story reveals Anderson’s dissatisfaction with the change of life style in his time.In this story he has created a father who dares not to face reality directly but only cherishes some illusion of wealth and political power.The mother is totally against the life style in vogue,but her resistance meets constant failure be cause of the great power of it.In the following,the psychological state of the couple will be studied with an eye on there relation and their respective relation with the son,hoping this will give more insight to the understanding of Anderson’s artistic product.