本文以林懷民小說集《變形虹》、《蟬》為本，指出「存在悲感」及「死亡魅影」為其作品重大主題，並進而探討其中所投射的社會圖象與時代意義。林懷民筆下青年生命意義的虛無，源由於寂寞的人生、國族認同的焦慮以及情感定向的曖昧性；小說並反覆以不同方式的死亡，對照賴活於虛假成人世界的厭煩。整體而言，政治高壓陰影體現在林懷民小說裡，表現出強烈的「流浪失根」處境。在技巧方面，作者也大量展示西方現代主義的特色，從而形成時序與意念之混亂，由此亦可窺知當時知識份子如何以扭曲的方式，表現內在苦悶的用心。本文最後指出，相對於七等生、陳映真，林懷民小說的意義，在於體現出臺灣一九六○年代另一種「上層階級」知識青年的苦悶圖象。

The article discusses Lin Huai-min’s collections of short stories The metamorphic rainbow and Cicada, pointing out that “the sorrow of existence” and “the shadow of death” are major themes of his work. We then proceed to discuss the aspect of society and the meaning of times reflected in Lin’s novels. Due to the lonely life, the anxiety of national identity and the confusion of gender identity, the young in Lin’s novels feel life is nothing. The novels repeatedly use a variety of death to contrast the tiredness of living in the hypocritical adult world. Overall, the characters in Lin Huai-min’s novels all have the anxiety of “floating root” because of repressive politics. Regarding to the writing skill, the author uses a lot of techniques of Modernism to create confusion in time and thoughts, which also shows how the intellectuals of that time perform the inner anguish in a distorted way. The article concludes that, compared with Ci deng sheng and Chen Ying-jhen, the significance of Lin’s novels is to demonstrate the depressive image of the “upper class” Taiwan young intellectuals of 1960’s.