The Formation and Effect of Tension Structure

Taking the Children’s Education Text The Diary of Evil Children as an Example

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.211220.162How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Tension;Physical Phenomenon; Mechanism; Literary Characteristic; Literary Influence; Children’s Education

Abstract

As a physical phenomenon, “Tension” refers to the coexistence of two opposing forces, resulting in a tense and gripping state, and there is also such a mechanism in literary works, that is, the “complements, contraries and opposites” in the text are also opposite and complementary, and the “conflict or friction” between them can also create a tense and shocking effect. Therefore, the physical term tension can be used to properly and vividly describe some characteristic or influence of literature. The Diary of Evil Children is such a typical text full of tension. It combines various “complements, contraries and opposites” such as children’s perspective, childish language, legendary plot, thriller content and indifferent narrative, forming a strong tension structure and shaping a pair of extremely persevering and vicious twin “children’s Heroes”, shows the author’s complex attitude towards the children’s education view and human survival philosophy of “fighting evil with evil”,and the strong condemnation of the cruel war. In China’s war literature works, there is a lack of works with tension structure containing various “complements, contraries and opposites” like The Diary of Evil Children. Thus, the cruel side of war is often avoided or weakened. Therefore, The Diary of Evil Children should be regarded as a text of children’s education and a survival fable in wartime, and become a thought-provoking reference for us to carry out children’s education and examine human nature and war. The reason why Agota Kristof ‘s The Diary of Evil Children can attract attention and thought-provoking comes from this mechanism of tension that is similar to physics.

Copyright

© 2021 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press SARL.

Open Access

This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Mingzu LIN
AU  - Qian WANG
PY  - 2021
DA  - 2021/12/24
TI  - The Formation and Effect of Tension Structure
BT  - Proceedings of the 2021 4th International Conference on Humanities Education and Social Sciences (ICHESS 2021)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 945
EP  - 949
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.211220.162
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.211220.162
ID  - LIN2021
ER  -