Yang Kui (1906-1985) was born in Sin-Hua Town, Tainan County where the writer lives. Yang’s childhood at this place inspired his social thoughts and enlightened his literary talent. Due to the profound connection, in current years, Sin-Hua Urban Township Office and Culture & History Studio actively planned the establishment of Yang Kui Literature Hall and promoted Yang Kui as the local cultural symbol.
The essay initially employed the “analysis of literature”, collected and read through books related to “Taiwanese literature history” and “biography of Yang Kui”. Subsequently, the study used the “analysis of text” and absorbed Yang Kui’s Complete Works. Based upon his novels, the research proceeded with the exploration with regard to consciousness of subject and the form. In addition, the writer also interviewed the descendants of Yang Kui in order to find out the connection between the content of the novels and the reality. In three years, upon the demands of the activities and instruction of Sin-Hua Town, the writer persisted in the “field research method” and “action research method” to enrich the content of this study.
The consciousness of the subject of Yang Kui’s novels was mainly to present the life at the time. For the labor and farmer classes who were the majority during that time, they had to face the issues of poverty and unemployment every day. Besides, they were often threatened by disease and death. Through Yang Kui’s realistic depiction, one could recognize the colonial government’s oppression upon Taiwanese people and the injustice of capital society. However, even during that hard time, Yang Kui still attempted to lighten a bright light and reflected his expectation upon social movement which revealed the optimistic and positive aspects of Yang’s novels.
In addition, there were some general characteristics with regard to Yang’s form of creativity in his novels: 1. He preferred to describe the stories from the perspective of the main character and the first person. 2. The main characters of the story tended to be intellectuals, doctors, farmers and Japanese police, etc. The techniques of creating the characters tended to be based upon certain types. 3. Yang usually employed the rhetoric of symbolism and irony and adequately used the narrative art such as comparison. 4. He was good at creating typical surroundings to present the contradiction or conflict. The longer the novel was, the more complicated the structure became.
