Thunderstorm is a tragedy involving complicated blood relationships and numerous inevitable tragic coincidences. It is a dramatic feat with profound connotations and heart-stirring artistry.

As the chairman of the board of directors of a modern coal-mining company, Zhou Puyuan, a male character in the play had been to German to study. Cold-blooded, selfish and hypocritical, he was like a dictator of a dark dynasty in his home. The story unfolded around him. Thirty years earlier, his parents drove away Shiping, a maidservant whom he loved and who had born two sons for him in order to take as his wife for him a girl of an influential family. He thought she must have drowned herself in a river. However, she was saved and married Lu Gui, a lower-rank manservant. By a quirk of fate, thirty years later, Lu Gui worked at the Zhou's as a servant. Furthermore, his daughter Sifeng also became a maid of the Zhou's just as her mother had been three decades ago. Sifeng fell in love with Zhou Ping (a son of Zhou Puyuan and Shiping and the eldest son of the Zhou's) and was pregnant. Yet their love was filled with internal anguish because Fangyi, the young mistress of the Zhou's, did not give up Zhou Ping with whom she had an illicit relationship. At the same time, Sifeng had to face the love of Zhou Chong (a son of Zhou mPuyuan and Fanyi), the second eldest son of the Zhou's. To look for Sifeng, Shiping came to the Zhou's. Here, something that she hated most to see happened. She met Zhou Puyuan again although their old love could no longer be rekindled. Her daughter followed her suit and fell in love with her elder brother and got pregnant. Her two sons Zhou Ping and Lu Dahai could not put up with each other due to their different social status. Everybody present was in the dark except her who knew the truth inside out and thus complained of the unfair fate. As soon as the cloud over the blood relationships was cleared, a terrible tragedy occurred – Sifeng was electrocuted and Zhou Chong died the same way in trying to save her; Zhou Ping shot himself with a pistol and Fangyi went mad. Shiping was dumbfounded in the face of all these tragic scenes. As the arch- criminal for all these tragic and sinful events, Zhou Puyuan was doomed at the end of the play to swallow all these dismal results.(Fig.3-8)

Zhou Puyuan is a well-portrayed character in Thunderstorm. All sinful acts were attributable to his domestic autocracy The profound significance of Thunderstorm lies in its exposure of the close political and ideological bond between Chinese capitalists and the deep-rooted feudal traditions. Through his mind filled with complicated conflicts and his superficially human appearance, we can see the dark soul of a ghastly feudal despot.

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