Chapter 81 Section 3 Personal Reflection on the Times: "Uncle's Story"

The novella "Uncle's Story" [6] came out in the winter of 1990.Before this, Wang Anyi, who has always been prolific, had a year-long seal.Later, Wang Anyi wrote an article about her feelings during this writing period, saying that she felt that everything was destroyed, and there was a great pain that her worldview was shattered; the harsh reality of society forced her to make new thinking about the times, or Carry out the reconstruction of worldview. "Uncle's Story", as the first novel she wrote after restarting writing, is the first fruit of hard thinking.It can be said that whether it is the depth of spiritual exploration or the perfection of artistic innovation, this novel has reached a height that Wang Anyi has never achieved before.

In a nutshell, "Uncle's Story" is "a summary and review of an era" [7], and it is the writer's reflection on the era from a personal standpoint.The text of the novel reflects the writer's process of dismantling a public historical narrative.The so-called "uncle's story" is a condensed form of historical narrative. This story was put together by Wang Anyi with various narrative techniques, and finally exposed the spiritual phenomenon that originated from decades of historical encounters and existed in the era. A big crisis.Although all these in the novel only refer to the uncle (a famous writer who is similar to a spiritual leader), he is actually the personification of the times. The tragedy of the uncle and the emptiness of his spiritual world also reflect the sadness of the times. place.In this regard, "Uncle's Story" can be regarded as a personal fable of the times written by Wang Anyi, and the rich connotations of personal vision contained in it are all overflowing in the broader spiritual realm.

From the perspective of text form, all these profound ideological explorations are reflected in the narrative method of the work: it can be said that for Wang Anyi, the work of reconstructing the worldview is fundamentally equivalent to exploring a new narrative method. The novel features of "Uncle's Story" in narrative are mainly manifested in a double-layer narrative text contained in it, that is, the "story" in this novel is not only the story of the uncle, but also includes the story told by the narrator. The whole process of the story.This is what people usually say: "Uncle's Story" is a meta-fiction.The so-called metafiction is a novel about fiction, whose fundamental characteristic is that the process of making the story also appears in the text, and its main function is to break the authenticity of the story it tells, while at the same time strengthening the narrator's personal identity. View.In this novel, the narrator confessed at the beginning that he told the story with an epigram from his uncle: "I thought I was a lucky one, but now I find that I am not". The reason why he wants to tell the story is to express A similar thought in my mind: "I always thought I was a happy child, but suddenly I realized that I was not". "Story", it is precisely to use various narrative methods to dismantle the seemingly brilliant "Uncle's Story". Such a narrative method of dismantling meaning is the concrete manifestation of personal standpoint in the work.

Specifically, this novel generally has two novel narrative methods in the development of the plot: one is plural narrative, that is, the same thing is described multiple times, but each time it is different; Sexual fiction, that is, the narrator does not have any materials, and deduces the next step of the story entirely through his subjective analysis.Let's first look at the artistic effect of plural narratives.For example, at the beginning of the story, there are two different narrations in the novel about the place where the uncle was labeled as a rightist and sent down.The narrator first said that he went to Qinghai and heard a fairy tale in a snowy night, that is, an eagle would rather drink blood and live for thirty years than eat dead bodies like a crow and live for three hundred years. Yes, from then on I kept lofty idealism in my heart.But the narrator immediately said that this is just a legend, and the truth is that the uncle was sent back to his hometown and lived a mediocre life in a small town in northern Jiangsu.Although the narrator finally chose the idea that his uncle had been baptized with idealism, which met his image requirements as a spiritual leader, but since he disclosed the materials used in the process of compiling the plot, as far as the reading effect is concerned, it has clearly shown the story. Another possibility is that the uncle may not have any real idealistic beliefs at all.It can be said that no matter how the story develops, this plural narrative has successfully created an ironic effect in the text. It deconstructs the seriousness and sublime sense of the narrative content with different narratives, thus enabling Expressing the author's personal thoughts, that is, the idealistic spirit of the uncle and the era he represented is just a hypocritical illusion given later.Now let’s look at the use of analytical fiction in fiction.For example, in the episode of the uncle’s divorce, the narrator did not use the uncle’s own narration (that is, his divorce not only does not violate morality, but also does not damage his personality), but starts from a romantic incident after the uncle got married in a small town, and then follows the logic. Analyzed and compiled the following plot: After the uncle's extramarital affair was revealed, the wife defended his personality in a rude way. On the surface, it seemed to save his dignity, but in fact it gave him a fatal blow mentally.From then on, the uncle became afraid of his wife, and his married life became a misery, which only brought him humiliation and misfortune, and his whole being was completely depressed, and he completely forgot the idealistic belief in life, and became a survivalist. Or even sensualists, his spiritual world presents an extremely ugly face.Now that my uncle has had this secret psychological experience, when he becomes famous and starts a new life in the future, of course he can no longer tolerate the damage to himself caused by this past. If he wants to regenerate his soul, he will definitely not want to maintain that marriage.So far, the narrator has successfully completed the narration of this episode through his own analysis, and at the same time thoroughly revealed that the uncle's spiritual world and personality strength are simply vulnerable.

The whole novel is narrated in this way of dismantling the meaning, and finally it will explain the uncle's epigram: how did he find out that he is not lucky.For this reason, two important motives are set in the novel, that is, the uncle's spiritual world is not sacred and noble, and he had a depraved life in the small town.In this way, even though his uncle became a well-known writer after the Cultural Revolution and created a lofty image of a social hero for himself, he still felt a potential crisis from time to time. The more he wanted to get rid of his ugly past, the more he felt Put on mental shackles.When he was eager to change himself in the face of a new life, he could not obtain a truly free state of mind, which made him completely lose real happiness, and was on the verge of "the dark abyss of nihilism". At the end of the novel, two young The character finally breaks the uncle mentally.First, the uncle wanted to get close to a German girl, but saw a look of disgust and contempt in her eyes, which was obviously never encountered by the uncle after he became famous. At this very moment, he "becomes again the hapless self-defeating uncle in that small town". He suddenly "feels hopeless and hopeless". Afterwards, Dabao, the son of his uncle who had long been forgotten by him, came to him in a small town.Due to the emotional estrangement and mutual hostility between the two, a life-and-death struggle broke out between the father and the son. Although the uncle finally defeated his son, he really felt defeated in his heart: "defeat the son." What hope is there for my father?... Uncle thought more than once: He will never be happy again. He once had a life like a dog, can he still live proudly like a human? He thought about this period The life of pigs, dogs, insects and ants cannot be destroyed, and this life has become a living thing, shrinking in the corner of his house, this is the great treasure.” Through the interpretation of this plot, the narrator finally revealed the uncle’s misfortune. The root of his ugliness, that is, beneath his radiant image, there is a once ugly self, and behind his proud and brilliant present, there is a humble and humiliating past; Uncle does everything in his power to get rid of his ugliness and humiliation , but he did not expect that this ugliness and humiliation is actually the whole of his self and past, and even his present glory and glory are being built on it.Once he woke up due to the change of reality, all the vain illusions collapsed in an instant, and the uncle had to face his dark heart, completely losing the possibility of self-salvation.

As a result, all the false sanctity and nobility in "Uncle's Story" have been dismantled, revealing the desolation and ugliness of an era.At the end of the novel, the narrator says: "After I have finished telling my uncle's story, I will never tell any more happy stories." Their pursuit is to be free and happy gamers, but in fact their games are neither happy nor free.In the author's view, only a truly serious sense of tragedy can achieve the self-salvation of this generation, and the narrator's original intention of telling this story is to obtain such an opportunity.He chose a character who is considered to have a firm belief and a powerful and noble spiritual world as the object of the narrative. The purpose was to take him as the target of attack and exchange for his own spiritual maturity with acts similar to patricide.While this is still fundamentally the way the game is played, it is serious play, with an undertone of mental combat.But what was unexpected was that the target he chose to attack was actually so vulnerable that it even showed itself without attacking.When the narrator deconstructs his uncle's spiritual world step by step, revealing the ugliness of his personality and his irresistible destiny, he finds that his dissolution is meaningless; all he has done has only aggravated his bewilderment and grief , once again proved his unhappiness, and at the same time thoroughly exposed the falsehood of the spirit of the times itself.