Chapter 70 Section 4 Cruel and Indifferent Discovery of Human Nature: "A Kind of Reality"

Every novel written by Yu Hua in 1986-1987 can be called a fable.He tries to construct a closed personal fictional world, through which he endows the external world with an image model that he thinks is real.This shows a strong urge to explain the world, as if a young man suddenly discovered that he held the secret of the world and couldn't wait to preach it everywhere. The latter, rather than the former, produces a new perspective on the world, and indeed discovers another side of the world.However, the "selfless" narrative effect he deliberately pursued during this period forced him to create a mask: an indifferent narrator. As a result, it was his indifference rather than his shock that left a deep impression on the readers at the time. There is no conceptual discussion in this article of 12, but an intention to explain concepts can be seen from the title and plot layout of the novel.This intention, as critics put it: "is a complex mixture of a conceptual impulse to interpret the world and an artistic ideal of making a one-off pictorial model of the world."13 This pictorial model can first be found in his Found in the layout of the novel.This is an "hourglass" novel layout, which shows a deliberate symmetry: Shangang's son Pippi kills Shanfeng's son, Shanfeng kills Pippi, Shangang kills Shanfeng, Shanfeng His wife killed Shan Gang with the help of the public security organs.Even the characters' names "Shangang" and "Mountain Peak" show a deliberate symmetry.If we only discuss it from the perspective of "thematics", what is being told here is not a new story. This kind of serial newspaper plot has actually been widely circulated in folktales. They all provide a cause, and these causes are very small and trivial, showing that the civilized side of human nature is far from being able to resist the savage and stupid side, which is about to explode at the slightest temptation, and once triggered, it will be as automatic as dominoes. Develop, expand, and destroy both sides.In fact, another perspective on human nature has been reflected in folk tales, but it is only covered by a traditional story form.From the perspective of the plot, Yu Hua's contribution lies in canceling the cause of the story and designing this kind of vendetta as a blind impulse. The story of this vendetta is shocking, and further innovations in narrative make him adapt an old story into a new one.

Yu Hua said: "What I am looking for is a narrative method without self." During the narrative process, "I try my best to avoid the direct narrative and let the gloomy sky show the sunshine." 15. Different from the traditional storytelling method, Yu Hua designed an indifferent The narrator, and with the help of this narrator, provides another perspective for observing the world. This perspective is extreme and straightforward, allowing people to see another world picture and the bestial side of human beings.The narrator allows him to tell this brutal story with a seemingly undisturbed tone.This is also reflected in the narrative attitude of the novel. In the novel, the use of the narrator’s privileges is minimized as much as possible, neither too much discussion nor psychological analysis of the characters, let alone value judgments, as if looking down on the ignorance and cruelty of the world from outside. .But the role of the narrator is still important, and his indifference allows the characters to come to the fore and give their full performance.He is like a flexible camera, constantly changing viewpoints, and combining various fragments through changes, showing the bloody process of vendetta.Such narratives have powerful effects, and the vendetta scenes are chillingly performed.For example, the scene in the novel where Shan Gang tortured and killed his brother Shan Feng is described as a deliberate calculation, but this calculation is not shown in detail, but only describes his external activities, and the dull narrative brings us to the mountain. Tied to a tree, Shank poured bone broth over the soles of his feet and let a puppy lick them, we learned what he was up to.Even in such an extreme scene, the narrator never describes the conscious activities of the characters, but only shows the characters' feelings and direct reactions. The novel describes the scene of the mountain being tortured and killed like this:

However, at this moment, a strange feeling slowly rose from the soles of the feet, and it climbed up again, faster and faster, and soon climbed to the chest.Before he could yell for the third time, he couldn't help but shrink his head, and then laughed desperately.He wanted to retract his legs, but they couldn't bend them, so he had to swing them up and down, and although his body twisted wildly, he didn't move at all.His head was shaking dizzily at the moment.The mountain's laughter seemed to be scraped out from two sheets of aluminum. Shan Gang looked cheerful at this time, and he said to Shan Feng: "You are so happy." ’ Then he turned to his wife and said, ‘I’m so happy that I’m a little jealous. ' The wife wasn't looking at him, her eyes were on the dog, which greedily licked the mountain's bare soles with its tongue.He found his wife's expression was as greedy as a dog's.Then he went to see his sister-in-law, who was still sitting on the ground, she had been confused by the strange laughter of the mountain.She stared blankly at the mountain peak, she was a little delirious because of some inexplicable reason. "

This narrative indifference and simplicity has a profound conceptual strategy.The author Yu Hua claims that what he pursues is "truth", but this kind of reality is not "the experience of being surrounded by daily life", but a kind of "truth in the eyes of writers". This simplicity is also an important factor in adopting a different strategy.It is with the help of this simplification, rather than the description, evaluation, and rationalization of daily life experience, that the dark side of the world and human nature is demonstrated.The narration only describes the external actions, simple feelings and direct physiological reactions of the characters, while ignoring the rational consciousness activities of the characters, which is just a conscious description of them as a species of irrational species, which not only conforms to the novel's The plot of blind vendetta is also in line with his concept of the world and human nature.As a critic pointed out: "He seems to have jumped out of this world, looking back and calmly watching how people live. It is to reveal to you a scene of life: what is the truth of life? Unintentional from childhood Injury, to adults killing each other, everyone's crimes seem to be accidental or instinctive, just like the game" 16, the brief narrative strategy is undoubtedly adapted to this intention.

So, what is the "truth" that Yu Hua pursues?He himself said: "So far, my thinking about reality is just a suspicion of common sense. That is to say, when I no longer believe in common sense about real life, this doubt leads me to attach importance to another part of reality, which directly induces It gave me my direct thoughts about chaos and violence." The violence in 17 can be said to be a metaphor for this "other part of reality": from the old slaves' gladiatorial fights to the current boxing and even cricket fighting, Yu Hua draws from it. Seeing "civilization's quiet concession to barbarism" and realizing "how violence is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people", "in the face of violence and chaos, civilization is just a slogan, and order has become a decoration" 18. At the end of the novel, most of Shan Gang The transplantation of organs was unsuccessful, but the transplantation of reproductive organs was successful, and the seeds of life of the deceased continued in an absurd way, symbolizing that chaos and violence would still continue.The form of his life is artificial, or in Yu Hua's words, a "form of hypocrisy". However, with the help of this "form of hypocrisy"19, Yu Hua successfully expressed the "other part of reality" he discovered.Perhaps because his artistic ideal of creating image models for the world is too strong, his way of thinking in this period has "matured and fixed" in the work, tending to be stereotyped.Stereotype means death, which forces new changes in his later creations.

Notes: 1 Formalism: The usual understanding refers to the literary tendency that is keen on playing with writing skills but lacks the support of experience and concepts. 2 The author appears directly in the novel and exposes the fictional nature of the novel. 3. Paradoxical hallucinations: The traditional notion of realism that the novel itself is a true reflection of the world. A tendency of 20th-century literary theory has been to reveal that narratives that appear to us to be real are also highly conventionalized, and that all representations of reality are equally artificial.Therefore, the so-called "truth" in the novel should only be understood as the "illusion" caused by a certain narrative method in the reader's mind. 4 Ma Yuan's narrative trap: This point of view was put forward by Wu Liang. Contemporary Writers Review, No. 3, 1987.

5 Quoted from Ge Fei’s preface. 6 Quoted from Zhang Qinghua's "Contemporary Avant-Garde Literary Trends in China", Jiangsu Literature and Art Publishing House, 1997 edition, p. 25. 7 Signifiers: Basic Concepts of Structuralist Linguistics.According to Saussure, the founder of structuralism, language is a synchronic system of signs, in which each sign is regarded as composed of a "signifier" (an acoustic image or its written counterpart) and a "signified" ( concept or meaning).The relationship between the signifier and the signified is a conventional arbitrary relationship.The later structuralist poetics further developed it, arguing that in "poetic" language, the sign is out of touch with its object, and the normal relationship between the sign and the referent is disrupted, so that the sign becomes itself The object of value acquires a certain independence. 8 Quoted from the dialogue collection "Understanding the 1990s" by Chen Sihe and others, People's Literature Publishing House, 1996 edition, "Owl Book Series", pp. 11-12.

9 "The Temptation of Gangdise", first published in "Shanghai Literature" No. 2, 1985. 10 "I Am a Juvenile Wine Jar", first published in 1987 as a joint issue of "People's Literature" 1-2. The quotations for the theoretical analysis of the 11 books are all quoted from Zhang Xinxin's "Dwelling and Nomadic Land", "Fire Phoenix New Criticism Collection", Xuelin Press, 1993, pp. 41-42. 12 First published in the first issue of "Beijing Literature" in 1988, this textbook is based on the second volume of "Yu Hua's Works Collection", published in 1994 by China Social Sciences Press.

13 Gao Yuanbao's words, quoted from the dialogue collection "Understanding the 1990s" by Chen Sihe and others, People's Literature Publishing House, 1996 edition, p. 9. 14 Readers can refer to "A small gap in a penny leads to a big disaster" in the book. 15 Yu Hua, included in "Yu Hua Works Collection" Volume 2, China Social Sciences Press, 1994 edition, p. 283. 16 Ibid. Note 8, p. 11. 17 Ibid. Note 15, p. 281. 18 Ibid. Note 15, p. 280. 19. Note 15, page 277.