| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立中興大學 === 台灣文學與跨國文化研究所 === 103 === During the 1970s, Taiwan faced serious economic and diplomatic crisis, including the dispute over Diaoyutai islands, Japan’s establishment of a diplomatic tie to People''s Republic of China, and the United States’ decision to sever diplomatic relations with Taiwan, and then Taiwan’s loss of its seat in the United Nations; each event stirred up nationalist sentiment in Taiwan. During this period, Huang Chun-ming, with his keen observation, published novels to sarcastically criticize colonialism and comprador elites. His novels raised public discussion and later on became classic texts of examining colonial legacy in Taiwan during the 1970s. In these stories, children as supporting characters are worthy of attention because they are often the turning points of narratives or leading characters’ decision-making. Based on Fredric Jameson’s concept of “the third world literature as national allegory,” this thesis explores how children play roles in insinuating nationalism and criticizing colonialism in Huang Chun-ming''s novels of the 1970s.
The first part of this paper discusses the roles of children related to the theme of Japanese colonialism. My study has found that the roles of children in the texts can be summarized as four types: ‘the next-generation of colonial victims,’ ‘the next generation which is lack of historical consciousness,’ ‘the next generation as a symbol of hope,’ and ‘the next generation which bears the duty of cultural inheritance.’ If we reinterpret the metaphor of children’s roles in terms of national narrative, the importance of children’s roles will supersede that of protagonists and occupy the critical positions in the texts.
The second part of the paper discusses the relationships between the roles of children, the United States’ hegemony, and the problem of comprador elites. In these stories, ‘the next generation which bears the duty of cultural inheritance’ disappears, while the other three types of children’s roles still exist. In the texts, while Taiwanese people encounter powerful cultural impact made by the United States, they face both the emergence of elites as imperialist compradors and the crisis of loss of language and culture. ‘How can we protect the next generation from forgetting our own language and culture?’ becomes the cornerstone of Huang’s stories.
Therefore, the study has found that, despite their supporting roles, children are carefully integrated into national narratives. Children in Huang’s novels have many special meanings and subtle links to national allegories. For Huang Chun-ming, children not only symbolize hope and inheritance, but also demonstrate the victims in invasion of imperialist culture. In a word, Huang’s stories show that we must be aware of the problems of Japanese and American imperialism and keep criticizing colonial legacy in order to maintain our cultural inheritance and identity for the next generation.
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