ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes to read Jiang Rong’s Wolf Totem as an allegory. In its celebration of the Mongolian wolves and its critique of Chinese national character, the novel tells a story of human degradation and ignominy. The problem of Chinese civilization, the storyteller suggests, begins with its arrogant disregard for and brutal destruction of the organic relationship between natural and human worlds. The novel’s apparent militarism, racism, and even fascism, for which it has been criticized, must be considered in connection with the author’s historical anthropology of the agrarian Han Chinese and nomadic Mongols and his preference for the latter over the former. Admittedly, its thematic interest is substantially confined to the symbolic values of lupine and nomadic life on the steppes, but it resonates with the May Fourth efforts to reconstruct a new Chinese identity. Wolf Totem is a tale of radical pessimism, and its depiction of our rapidly deteriorating ecological conditions anticipates a possible future of catastrophic human failure and defeat.
