This thesis is mainly made of five chapters. The first chapter is about the background, significance, research methods and structure of the thesis. In the second part, the scholars’ previous researches on characters, themes and the author of the works, which takes great inspiration to this thesis, are reviewed. In the third chapter, the thesis describes the two main characters of the stories - Monkey King’s and Frodo’s experience of realization of personal value by their own efforts and other people’s help under their own growing background. The fourth part explores on the collectivism complex and the inpidualism complex of Monkey King and Frodo respectively and discusses on the perse requirements of people’s behavior between Chinese moderation and harmonious culture and western humanism. The fifth part gives a conclusion to the thesis.论文网

Chapter 2 Literature Review

2.1 About Journey to the West

2.1.1 Main Content of Journey to the West

Journey to the West, a myth novel, includes a total of one hundred chapters, and it mainly tells the story that Monkey King protects Tang Monk to went to India and fetched back Buddhist scriptures by defeating ghosts and monsters. The book can also be pided into three parts: the first part (1~7 chapters) recounts the birth of Monkey King, and how it became the Monkey King, became immortal, created a tremendous uproar in the heavenly palace, and was put into Five Elements Mountain by Buddha. The second part (8~12 chapters) tells why Tang Monk traveled west for Buddhist scripture, including Buddha’s creation of Buddhist scripture, the birth of Tang Monk, Wei Zheng’s chopping of dragon king, wandering of Emperor Taizong of Tang in the unseen world, and Tang Monk’s west travel for the scriptures upon the order of Emperor Taizong. The third part (13~100 chapters), as the main part of the book, involves the whole process of fetching Buddhist scriptures, in which the disciples represented by Monkey King protected Tang Monk to the west, and overcame eighty-one difficulties before they completed the tasks.

2.1.2 Previous Studies on Journey to the West

Certain development has been achieved in the research of Journey to the West in the 1990s on the basis of the 1980s, yet the main researches still started with the characters, editions, themes and the author of the novel. The research thought of the researchers during this period became more widen that the discussions about some issues were more profound.

The research of characters has always been an important part in the study of Journey to the West. In terms of the research of prototype, people have debated on the relation of Monkey King and Indian Hanuman since 1980s, but they didn’t reach a conclusion. Later in 1990s, the research of prototype was not a hot topic any more that only a few essays mentioned it. Instead, they turned to pay attention to the research of the characters such as Sha Wujing, Zhu Bajie and Bull Demon King. In the aspect of comprehensive analysis on the novel, the analysis on the character of Monkey King has still been dominant, but the perspective and depth thereof became different from the before. Xiao Jinlong (1990: 46-52) compared Monkey King and Zhu Bajie to Don Quixote and Sancho from the perspective of comparison between Chinese and western cultures to survey the differences of Chinese and Western cultural psychology. And Zou Shaoxiong (1993) put forward the idea that the character of Monkey King was an embodiment of super ego consciousness of human through the process from nascent, conscious to mature of classic Chinese literature.While Tian Tongxu (1994: 67-72) thought that Monkey King was a fighter against Neo-Confucianism, Zhu Bajie was an ordinary person oppressed by the Neo-Confucianism, and Xuanzang was a living portrayal of the combination of three religions (i.e. Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism ).

Apart from the analysis on the above characters, there were some discussions about the characters of Guanyin, Tathagata Buddha, and Local God of the Land, God Erlang and Buddha. In general, during the period, the characters that were ignored before attracted the researchers’ attention, which would play a positive role in the re-interpretation of the masterwork.