Chapter 12 Section 2 Exploring the Megastructure of War Novels: "Red Sun"

After Du Pengcheng's, Wu Qiang's novel "Red Sun" 4 made a good exploration in expressing major battles in artistic form.It takes the three consecutive battles of Lianshui, Laiwu, and Menglianggu in the Shandong battlefield in 1947 as the main line of plot development, reflecting the author's "epic" artistic pursuit of realistic war novels, that is, striving to create novels with a grand structure and a panoramic view. The description shows the unique charm of war.In these three battles, the People's Liberation Army had its defeats and its victories, each with its own characteristics, and the author's descriptions are also slightly detailed, each with its own focus. In the process of narrating historical events, it reflects his ingenuity in the structure of the novel.The work adopts the method of suppressing first and then raising, first using Lianshui to retreat to express the disparity in strength between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party and the severe situation faced by the PLA at that time.The Battle of Lianshui, which took place at the end of 1946, ended when the Kuomintang army captured Lianshui and the PLA was forced to retreat due to heavy casualties.The Lianshui retreat is only a small episode in the entire military conflict between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, but the writer presents it in front of readers from the very beginning, making the whole work full of suspense and attraction, and making the development of the subsequent battle a focus of common concern for readers.Moreover, through the passive situation of the People's Liberation Army on the battlefield, the author not only vividly expresses the strength and weakness of the forces on the Shandong battlefield at that time, but also creates a strong contrast for the final victory of the People's Liberation Army to illustrate the hard-won victory of the war; The characters with individual characters on both sides of the country and the Communist Party have made a good foreshadowing.From the very beginning, the writer put the PLA in the desperate situation of "putting it to death and then reviving". This structural layout was unique and true in the literary works that were used to describing the PLA at the time as "sweeping thousands of troops like a roll", reflecting the The writer of war novels had a unique vision of expressing modern warfare under the same name of the era at that time.Then, the work takes the victory of the Laiwu Great Victory as a transition, and finally culminates in the annihilation of the 74th Division of the "Ace Army" of the Kuomintang in the Battle of Menglianggu. It vividly completes the confirmation and elaboration of the common name of the era: that is, the modern revolutionary war led by the Communist Party of China has experienced thrilling difficulties and twists, and after countless sacrifices, it finally won the final victory.

As a war-themed novel, the more important contribution of "Red Sun" to the development of contemporary Chinese literature lies in the innovation and exploration embodied in the concept of war and novel aesthetics while sharing the same name with the times. sex. First, replace the legendary stories in traditional war novels with grand modern war scenes.Among the war-themed novels in the 1950s, "Railway Guerrillas" and "Lin Haixueyuan" all consciously absorbed and utilized the free and extensive artistic spirit full of primitive vitality in the folk culture tradition, based on the legend of traditional knight-errant novels. Sex stories serve as narrative frameworks for heroic deeds in war.This narrative method retains the traces of traditional Chinese novels, but in the face of new narrative purposes, it clearly reflects the limitations of its narrative structure, because the narrative of legendary stories is generally only suitable for telling small-scale guerrilla warfare , but unable to freely show the large-scale modern warfare frontally.In fact, even works that deliberately show large-scale modern warfare like this still rely on the charm of legend to a considerable extent. Sex story composition.However, "Red Sun" broke through the previous legendary novels that focused on the "company" and directly centered on the large-scale battle between the CCP's "ever-victorious hero army" and the KMT's trump card army. Extending the strokes from military divisions to company squads, from senior generals to ordinary soldiers, from the army to localities, from the front battlefield to the rear hospital, the field of vision is broad and well-defined, the scene is grand and compact, it should be said that it is in the narrative is very distinctive.

Secondly, the novel has a good portrayal of the richness of characters in the war environment, breaking through the limitations of similar creations at that time.In addition to referring to the fact that the novel depicts multi-layered and rich portraits of characters from senior military generals to ordinary soldiers, and their rich inner activities including love life, it is also reflected in the following two aspects: one is to pay attention to the characters. Cultural background and historic revelations.When portraying the images of our army officers and soldiers, the writers did not write them as perfect and perfect people, but when expressing their heroic behavior, they also paid great attention to expressing their emotions and desires, digging out their own character weaknesses, and the spirit of the characters in the course of the war. self-struggle.Although the author's shaping of the images of regiment leader Liu Sheng and company commander Shi Donggen does not rule out reference to foreign war literature, they are still unique in the images of war literature in the 1950s.The author not only writes about their side as the grassroots commanders of our army, but also writes about their character weaknesses from their peasant origins. In fact, most soldiers were farmers before they put on military uniforms. The inherent cultural concepts of farmers, For example, Liu Sheng, as the leader of the regiment, has prejudice against intellectuals (political commissar Chen Jian) ​​and his weak sense of time.Another example is that the company commander Shi Donggen rode his horse drunk after the victory, dressed in the uniform of a captured enemy officer, and ran and shouted wildly. A certain characteristic of the rebellion of the peasant class is fully displayed.Wu Qiang's description is obviously not a simple imitation of "Water Margin", but implies a criticism of the peasant cultural tradition, which to a certain extent shows the author's enlightenment standpoint as an intellectual.Although the author's position seems to be a bit vacillating under the strong common name of the times, his exploration is still commendable.The second is that the novel did not adopt the popular caricature method at the time to portray the images of the hostile characters, but rather realistically described their sense of responsibility, fighting ability and even conscience as human beings with different political positions.The way of caricature is always disdain to enter the inner world of the subject and describe them as people in social relations, but to describe the middle and senior generals of the Kuomintang as real people is a flaw in the character creation of "Red Sun". Salient features.At that time, more works described the Kuomintang army as vulnerable and regarded war as a child's play, but "Red Sun" focused on writing the images of Zhang Lingfu and Zhang Xiaofu, two Kuomintang officers.Since the 74th Division led by Zhang Lingfu is Chiang Kai-shek's direct ace unit armed with full American equipment, the first main force of the five main forces of the Kuomintang, and is known as the "Pride of Heaven", Zhang Lingfu seemed invincible after capturing Lianshui City. When he was surrounded by the People's Liberation Army, he was still planning to wipe out the East China Field Army of the Communist Party of China and solve the Shandong battlefield in one fell swoop.But while the writer described his self-willedness and arrogance, he also described his inner panic about being alone in the battle and no one to respond, and also described his calm and capable side as a senior general.In addition, the novel also uses the comparison between Zhang Lingfu and Zhang Xiaofu to describe the images of different types of Kuomintang officers. The plot of Zhang Xiaofu surrendering and urging Zhang Lingfu to give up Meng Lianggu is not simplified, but to reflect the power of the CCP’s political offensive It also shows the pressure of the general trend and his loyalty to his superiors and military duties.In war novels, describing the image of the enemy as an independent artistic image objectively deviates from the "dual opposition" artistic model under the cultural norms of war, making the characters in the works richer, more vivid, and more vivid. Letters have special significance in contemporary war novels.

Third, in the novel's contrasting and transformative descriptions of war and peace, it not only reflects a moderate sense of rhythm in the narrative, but also implies some deviation from the common name of the times in the concept of war.The novel uses a lot of space to reflect non-war real scenes, such as hospitals, scenes of life in the rear, and scenes of love life, etc., so as to set off modern warfare and make the narrative of war more rich and vivid.On the one hand, this makes the narrative of the novel have tension and relaxation, and the speed is coordinated, so that readers can get a pleasure in reading; In contrast, its narrative behavior is the yearning for a peaceful life and the call for a better human nature, which is objectively a deviation from the war concept at that time.This can also be seen from the experience of "Red Sun" in the 1960s. Like "Red Sun", "Red Sun" has also been brutally criticized, and the reasons are much more complicated. Appropriate descriptions of love and "beautifying the image of the Kuomintang reactionaries" are the three most important "crimes", and behind them are the conflicts and departures from the concept of war under the same name as the times.