What is the difference between the theme of a novel and the theme of an essay? Help the gods.

Novel is a literary genre that focuses on portraying characters and reflects social life through complete stories and specific environmental descriptions. A novel has three elements: characters, plots and environment (natural environment and social environment). The main means by which novels reflect social life is to portray characters. The characters in the novel are called typical characters; This character was created by the author according to real life. He is different from the real person, "eclectic, integrated." It is more concentrated and representative to reflect life through such typical figures. The means of shaping characters in novels can be general introduction, specific description, description of characters' appearance and psychological activities. It can be either the action dialogue of the characters or the comments of the author. You can use the pen from the front or from the side. The novel mainly shows the character and performance center through stories. The story comes from life, but after sorting, refining and arranging, it is more concentrated, complete and representative than the real things that happen in current life. The description of the environment and the characterization of the novel have an extremely important relationship with the central idea. In the description of environment, social environment is the key point, which reveals all kinds of complex social relations, such as identity, status, historical background of growth and so on. The natural environment includes place, time, season, climate, scenery and so on. The description of the natural environment plays a great role in expressing the emotions of characters and rendering the atmosphere. Simply put, the novel is centered on shaping characters, and reflects social life through the narrative of stories and the description of the environment. Fiction is the essence of this novel. "Capturing the emotional experience of characters' lives" is the artistic content that the novel tries to explore. The more fresh, subtle, unique, accurate and profound the feeling experience is, the more novel it is. "Fiction" and "capturing the emotional experience of the characters' lives" are the things that can best reflect the essence of the novel. The word "novel" was first seen in Zhuangzi Foreign Things: "It is far from big to decorate a novel as a county magistrate." (The novel is "obscene words, not Tao", doing and pursuing; County magistrate, good reputation. ) "trivial words" and "superficial knowledge of the path" are the original meaning of the novel. Huan Tan said to the novel in "New Theory": "If his novelists combine small words, draw inferences from others and make a short book, they will have considerable words to manage their bodies and families. "The novel is still a short book of" governing the body and managing the family ",not a" avenue "for governing the people. Ban Gu believes that novels are written by people who listen to gossip and gossip. Although he thinks that the novel is still a little knowledge and a small way, it touches on the characteristics of the novel from another angle and is rooted in life. At the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, Liang Qichao, a reformist, vigorously advocated the "novel revolution", and the novel theory took on a new look. The status of novels has been upgraded as never before, and they are even regarded as "the soul of the people", "the root of official history" and "the best of literature", and are no longer insignificant "gossip" and "trivial words". Classification of novels: Word count is a factor that distinguishes novels, novellas, short stories and mini-novels, but it is not the only factor. People usually call novels with less than 1000 words as mini-novels, short stories with 1000 to 10000 words, novellas with 10000 to 100000 words, and novels with more than 100000 words. This is only in terms of words. In fact, the difference between long, medium and short stories is mainly determined by the scope of life and the capacity of the works. The novel has the largest capacity, the widest length, a relatively long length and a relatively complex structure. Generally, social life is expressed through more characters and numerous events, such as A Dream of Red Mansions. Although novellas do not reflect life as widely as novels, they can also reflect a certain breadth of life. The number of characters and the complexity of the plot are between novels and short stories, such as Man to Middle Age. Short stories are compact, short and pithy. They often write only one or a few characters, describing a fragment or episode of life. The life reflected by short stories is not as broad as that of novels and novellas, but it is also complete, and some of them have profound and rich social significance. Prose (1) Overview Prose: One of the literary genres, the name of prose, with the development of literature, its meaning and scope are constantly evolving. In ancient China, prose was called "prose" compared with verse and parallel prose, that is, all works, whether literary or non-literary, were called "prose". Modern prose refers to literary works other than poetry, drama and novel, including prose, essays, travel notes, biographies, memoirs and reportage. In recent years, biography, reportage and prose have developed into unique styles, so people tend to narrow the scope of prose. (2) Overview of ancient and modern prose: 1. Ancient prose: In ancient China, in order to distinguish it from rhymes and parallel prose, all prose articles, including classics, biographies and history books, were called prose. The development of China's ancient prose: Pre-Qin prose: including hundred schools of thought's prose and historical prose. Hundred schools of thought's essays are mainly expositions, such as The Analects of Confucius, Mencius and Zhuangzi. Historical prose mainly focuses on historical themes, and all articles and books describing historical events and historical figures are historical prose, such as Zuo Zhuan. Prose in Han Dynasty: Historical Records by Sima Qian in the Western Han Dynasty pushed biographical prose to an unprecedented peak. After the Eastern Han Dynasty, individual prose forms such as books, notes, inscriptions, essays and prefaces began to appear. Prose in Tang and Song Dynasties: Under the impetus of the ancient prose movement, prose writing became increasingly complex, and literary prose appeared, resulting in many excellent works such as landscape travel notes, fables, biographies and essays. And the famous "Eight Masters of Tang and Song Dynasties" also emerged at this time. Prose in the Ming Dynasty: First, there are "seven sons" who are mainly antique. Later, the Tang and Song schools advocated that all works flow out of the chest. Gui Youguang is the most famous one. Qing dynasty prose: represented by Tongcheng school, Qing dynasty prose pays attention to the embodiment of "righteousness" Yao Nai, a representative writer of Tongcheng School, summed up the style of ancient Chinese prose and classified it into 13 categories, including argumentative essays, prefaces and postscripts, recitation, calligraphy, preface, imperial edict, biography, epitaph, miscellaneous words, ode, ci fu and mourning. 2. Modern prose: refers to the literary style on an equal footing with poetry, novels and dramas. It is characterized by expressing the author's views and feelings and revealing its social significance through the description of some fragments or life events in real life, which can be processed and created on the basis of real people and things; It doesn't necessarily have complete stories and characters, but focuses on expressing the author's feelings about life, with flexible selection of materials and strong lyricism. The "I" in prose is usually the author himself; Language is not limited by rhythm, and its forms of expression are diverse. It can be combined with narration, discussion, lyricism and description, or it can be emphasized. According to the needs of content and theme, we can create a certain artistic conception by describing typical details in life, describing images, depicting psychology, rendering the environment and setting off the atmosphere. Such as in novels, and use artistic techniques, such as symbols in poetry. Prose has many forms, such as essays, short comments, sketches, close-ups, travel notes, newsletters, letters, diaries, memoirs and so on. In a word, prose is short in length, free in form, widely used, flexible in writing and beautiful in language, which can quickly reflect life and is deeply loved by people. (3) Classification of Prose: According to the content and nature of Prose, it can be divided into the following categories: Narrative Prose: Prose based on writing characters' notes. This kind of prose gives a concrete and outstanding description and portrayal of people and things, expresses the author's understanding and feelings at the same time, and also has a strong lyrical component, with full feelings between the lines. Narrative prose focuses on reflecting the essence of things from the development and changes of narrative characters and events, with factors such as time, place, characters and events, selecting themes from one angle and expressing the author's thoughts and feelings. For example, Mr Fujino by Lu Xun, Remember a Spinning Wheel by Wu Boxiao, and Remember Mother by Zhu De. Lyric prose: prose focusing on expressing the author's thoughts and feelings. This kind of prose narrates and describes specific things, but usually it doesn't run through the whole story. Its outstanding feature is strong lyricism. It is either straightforward or touching, full of poetry and painting, even if it describes natural scenery, it also gives profound social content and thoughts and feelings. Excellent lyric prose has sincere feelings and vivid language, and often uses symbols and analogies to visualize ideas, which has strong artistic appeal. For example, Mao Dun's Praise of Poplar, Wei Wei's Sincere Farewell, Zhu Ziqing's Moonlight on the Lotus Pond and Bing Xin's Praise of Cherry Blossoms. Landscape Prose: Prose mainly describing scenery. Most of these articles express their feelings while describing the scenery, or express their feelings through the scenery, or indulge in the scenery, grasp the characteristics of the scenery, use the method of changing the scenery in the order of spatial transformation, and take the observed changes as the context of the full text. Vivid scenery description can not only explain the background and render the atmosphere, but also set off the thoughts and feelings of the characters and better express the theme. For example, Liu's Three Gorges of the Yangtze River. Philosophical Prose: Philosophy is the infiltration of sentiment, the spark of thought, the condensation of thought and the crystallization of wisdom. It runs through ancient and modern times, across China and foreign countries, embraces the world, penetrates the society of life, stays in the parents of life and flashes in the field of thinking. Smart authors are good at grasping the flash of philosophy and writing rich and thought-provoking beautiful articles in the form of pen and ink. Reciting such beautiful prose often can naturally be enlightened, edified, baptized and sublimated in a subtle way. This internalization is undoubtedly great. Philosophical prose participates in the truth of life with various images, thus revealing the eternal similarity between all things. Because of its profundity and spiritual penetration, it gives us a shocking aesthetic effect of penetrating into the essence through phenomena and revealing the inside story and thoughts of things. Grasp the way of thinking embodied in philosophical prose and experience the profound cultural connotation and accumulation contained in philosophical prose. 1. Symbolic thinking in philosophical prose: Philosophical prose constitutes a symbolic expression of ontology, because it transcends the meaning of daily experience and its own natural physical attributes. It abandons shallowness, but reaches the state of empathy with people's thoughts and resonance with life and gas field. We get rational awakening and carefree spirit from symbols, from the peace of mind to the tremor of the soul, which goes beyond the general emotional response and stays at the top of the spirit. 2. Associative thinking of philosophical prose: Because philosophical prose is a three-dimensional and comprehensive thinking system, after association, the connotation of the article is richer, not thin, and nature, society and life are integrated. 3. Emotional thinking of philosophical prose: Philosophical prose is essentially a dependence of ideological expression on emotion. Because the author has emotional participation in the process of understanding life, and the result of understanding is the fusion of emotion and imagination, the thoughts in philosophical prose are not ordinary dry discussions, but thoughts containing life emotions and full of aesthetic emotional juice. Read the depth of the soul from between the lines of philosophical prose and understand the original meaning of life. This is the artistic beauty of philosophical prose. (4) The main features of prose: 1. The shape is scattered but the god is not scattered. " "Form and dispersion" mainly means that prose is widely used and free, and is not limited by time and space; Expression techniques are not limited to one pattern: it can describe the development of events, describe characters, convey feelings with things, and make comments. The author can freely adjust and change according to the needs of the content. "Distracted" mainly comes from the idea of prose, that is, the theme to be expressed in prose must be clear and concentrated, no matter how extensive the content of prose is and how flexible the expression is, it serves to better express the theme. In order to be scattered in shape but not in spirit, we should pay attention to the internal relationship between materials and central ideas in material selection, so that materials can run through an organic whole with certain clues in structure. Common clues in prose are: (1) taking things with profound or symbolic significance as clues; ⑵ Taking the "I" in the works as a clue and "I" as a clue, because I wrote what I saw, heard, thought and felt, and Kan Kan and Kan Kan talked freely, making readers feel more real, cordial and touching. 2. Deep artistic conception, paying attention to expressing the author's life feelings, strong lyricism and sincere emotion. With the help of imagination and association, the author writes from the superficial to the deep, from the real to the imaginary, in turn, which can integrate feelings into the scenery, send feelings to help each other, express the author's true feelings, realize the unity of things and me, show more profound thoughts and make readers understand more profound truths. 3. Beautiful and concise language, rich in literary talent. The so-called elegance means that the language of prose is fresh, lively and full of musical sense, and the writing is like a trickle, tinkling and sounding, sincere and sincere. The so-called conciseness means that the language of prose is concise, natural and fluent. A few words can describe vivid images, outline the scenes of characters and show far-reaching artistic conception. Prose tries to write the scenery as if it were in front of you and the feelings as refreshing. Prose is known as "beautiful prose", which not only has spiritual views and beautiful artistic conception, but also has fresh, meaningful and unpretentious literary talent. Reading some good essays regularly can not only enrich knowledge, broaden horizons and cultivate noble thoughts and sentiments, but also learn the skills of selecting materials, planning layout, choosing words and making sentences, and improve your language expression ability. (5) Prose appreciation skills: Prose appreciation focuses on grasping the relationship between "form" and "spirit". Prose appreciation should pay attention to the following points: 1. You should have a "literary eye" when reading prose. All poems that are exquisitely conceived, full of artistic conception or implicitly written often have an "eye". When appreciating prose, we should try our best to find a "literary eye" that can reveal the overall theme and make the finishing point, so as to understand the reasons and purposes of the author's writing. The setting of Yan Wen varies from text to text, which can be a sentence, a sentence, a detail, a trace of emotion or even a scene. Not every essay has the necessary "literary vision". 2. When reading prose, we should grasp the clues, clarify the author's ideas and accurately grasp the intention of the article. Structure is the skeleton of the article, and clues are the context of the article, which are closely related. Grasping the clues in prose can help us have a clear idea of the work, which is not only helpful to understand the author's writing intention, but also an appreciation of the author's planning and layout skills, so as to grasp the vivid essence of prose through the appearance of prose, and analyze the intention of the article along the author's thinking. There are usually the following clues: (1) Take the image of things as a clue, such as Ba Jin's Lamp; (2) Taking emotional development as a clue, such as Yang Shuo's "Litchi Honey"; (3) Taking time sequence as a clue, such as Liu's Three Diaries of the Yangtze River; (4) Taking spatial order as a clue, such as Zhu Ziqing's green; 5] Take the activities of characters as clues, such as Lu Xun's "From Baicaoyuan to San Tan Yin Yue"; (6) Take things as clues, such as Tang Tao's "trivial memories". 3. Pay attention to the characteristics of prose expression and deeply understand the content of the article. Prose often entrusts with things. In order to make readers feel the rich connotation of the important task entrusted to them, the author often gives a meticulous description of what he has written, which is called "getting the shape and getting the heart". When reading an article, we should grasp the characteristics of "form", see "spirit" from "form" and deeply understand the content of the article. 4. Pay attention to expand association and understand the charm of the article. The ways of association are: ① series connection: for example, Orion, Shang Shu → Zhong Bai old man → Dong Kun; (2) radiant: for example, Land focuses on "land" and writes "Love life, defend land and build land"; 3 False support: such as Praise of Poplar; 4 picture type: such as "landscape talk". Pay attention to enrich associations, from this to that, from the shallow to the deep, from the real to the virtual, so as to understand the charm of the article and understand the deeper truth. 5. Taste the language of prose. A major feature of prose is the beauty of language. A good essay is concise and beautiful, free and flexible, and close to spoken English. Beautiful prose is full of philosophy, poetry and painting. Excellent essayists have different language styles: Lu Xun's prose language is concise and profound, Mao Dun's prose language is exquisite and profound, Guo Moruo's prose language is magnificent, Ba Jin's prose language is simple and beautiful, Zhu Ziqing's prose language is fresh and meaningful, Bing Xin's prose language is euphemistic and lively, Sun Li's prose language is plain and unpretentious, Liu's prose language is bold and unrestrained, and Yang Shuo's prose language is exquisite. What is the elegance of prose language? The language of some essays often varies with the content. For example, Lu Xun's "In Memory of Liu Hezhen Jun" is as sharp as a dagger; The language of "Good Story" is gorgeous as a cloud; The language of kites is as dignified as a deep pool. If you appreciate the language style of prose, you can appreciate the content of prose more deeply.