Comparing the Understanding of Self between American Beat Generation and the Chinese in the 1980s from the Example of On the Road and Eighteen Years Old and Away
- DOI
- 10.2991/assehr.k.220401.095How to use a DOI?
- Keywords
- The Beat Generation; 1980s; Counter-cultural movements; civil liberty; self
- Abstract
After the Second World War, totalitarianism began to flourish in the United States at this time, while bringing about rapid economic development. However, the lack of response to political demands led to the emergence of rebellious voices, and the beat generation emerged as a branch of American literature. Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” is a masterpiece of the beat generation, and in 1978 China’s reform and opening-up policy shifted the center of social development to the economy, but it was not yet free from the repressive social environment. The rapidly developing economy and the empty spirit made people in the era of the old and the new unable to find a place to survive and gradually marginalized. This is the background for the emergence of 1980s literature. Yu Hua’s “Eighteen Years Old and Away” is a representative work of this period. Both books are based on the theme of finding a spiritual home in the turbulent society by going out to travel, but due to the essential cultural differences between the East and the West, the two novels ultimately express different themes and have different impacts on society. This paper analyzes the similarities and differences between these two novels and the reasons behind them by analyzing the historical background, literary context, writing style and themes.
- Copyright
- © 2022 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press SARL.
- Open Access
- This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license.
Cite this article
TY - CONF AU - Yiying Rong PY - 2022 DA - 2022/04/08 TI - Comparing the Understanding of Self between American Beat Generation and the Chinese in the 1980s from the Example of On the Road and Eighteen Years Old and Away BT - Proceedings of the 2022 International Conference on Social Sciences and Humanities and Arts (SSHA 2022) PB - Atlantis Press SP - 502 EP - 507 SN - 2352-5398 UR - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.220401.095 DO - 10.2991/assehr.k.220401.095 ID - Rong2022 ER -