毕业论文：Reading The Bonesetter’s Daughter from the Perspective of Primitivism

Reading The Bonesetter’s Daughter from the Perspective of Primitivism

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the
Degree of Bachelor of Arts


Abstract: The Bonesetter’s Daughter is one of Amy Tan’s most successful novels. Like Amy Tan’s other works, this book also focuses on the mother-daughter relationship. In this book, the relationship covers three generations: Precious Auntie, Luling, and Ruth. Precious Auntie is a tragic character who is born in old China. Luling, Precious Auntie’s daughter, spends half of her life struggling in China and the other half struggling in America. Luling’s daughter, Ruth, is an America-born Chinese. She is trapped in the conflict between Western and Eastern culture. The book reflects one of Amy Tan’s notable writing features as well, which is application of many Chinese traditional elements, like ghosts and superstitions, in the story. Thi
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3.3 Consciousness of Root Seeking……......................... .....................................6
3.3.1 Racial Memory and Cultural Heritage.................... ...............................7
3.3.2 Despair in Reality and Desire to Escape..................................................7
3.4 Language………………………………............................. .................................... …8
3 Conclusion………………………………………................... .................. ......................... 8
References.................... ........ ........ ... . ... . ........... ........ ........ ... . ... . ........ ... . ……..9



1. Introduction
Amy Tan is a famous American writer. Most of her successful novels are around one topic: mother-daughter relationship. The Bonesetter’s Daughter is one of them. It is about three generations: Precious Auntie, Luling and Ruth.
The book consists of three parts. The first part is about Ruth’s and Luling’s present life in California. Ruth is a book collaborator. Her life looks like a mess. She lives with Art, a sign linguist. They agree to start a relationship with no commitment. However, for some reasons Ruth does not know, their relationship begins to deteriorate. Ruth also has problems in getting along with Art’s two daughters. Another big problem is her mother, Luling. Luling is always picky and unsatisfied with everything, but she shows signs of dementia. In the second part, Luling becomes the narrator. She reveals her life in China. Precious Auntie’s story is also told in this section. Precious Auntie is “the bonesetter’s daughter”, because her father is a famous bonesetter. When Precious Auntie gets nineteen, two men propose to her. One is the coffinmaker, Chang; the other is Baby Uncle from the Liu Clan. Precious Auntie turns Chang down, which leads to his revenge on her wedding day. Precious Auntie loses her husband and father on the same day. She tries to commit suicide, but gets rescued by Lius. But Precious Auntie’s half face is destroyed. She loses ability to speak and she has already carried Baby Uncle’s baby, who e*actly is Luling. Since then, Precious Auntie stays in the Liu Clan as Luling’s nursemaid. Luling is the only person that can understand her. When Luling grows older, she insists on marrying to Chang’s son regardless of Precious Auntie’s objection. In the end, Precious auntie chooses to kill herself. Having known the truth that Precious Auntie is her biological mother, Luling lives in guilt and regret. The Liu Clan starts to decline and Luling is sent to an orphanage, where she receives education and meets her first husband. Her life is completely changed by the outbreak of the war. Japanese Soldiers kill her husband. She has to escape to Peking and then to Hong Kong. She waits in Hong Kong for her sister, Gaoling to get her visa to America. The last part is about changes in Ruth’s life. After knowing Luling’s past, Ruth gets to understand her mother. At the same time, her love life goes into a brighter direction.
Amy Tan is known as a good story-teller. She adopts multiple narratives to show th ……（未完，全文共22533字，当前仅显示4053字，请阅读下面提示信息。收藏《毕业论文：Reading The Bonesetter’s Daughter from the Perspective of Primitivism》）