Considering Jin Yong's different stresses on
personality ideals, his novels undergoes three stages:
collective standard heroes,
individual standard heroes and
counter-heroes. At the first stage, he emphasizes the characters' social values and
Collective senses, trying to make characters perfect ethically and morally from the perspective of traditional moral standards and aesthetic habits, but fails to make them appear real and vivid because of his tendency of conceptualizing these characters. At the second stage, the author engages himself in excavating the characters' merits and make critical comments on man's personality and culture, but because of too many coincidences, the characters he depicted lack the unity of richness and harmony. At the third stage, his works break through his usual way of exploring into the ideal personalities, and pose some profound and unique survey and criticism on the negative side of politics, history, culture, morality and civilization through the everyday figures. His artistic style becomes mature and skilled, thus accomplishing the leap in his novel writing from "best-sellers" to classics.
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