"Those who fight monsters should beware of turning themselves into monsters because of this. If you stare into the abyss for a long time, then the abyss will also look back at you. ”
The first page of Portrait is this passage from Nietzsche.
After reading it, I felt a chill in my back, and the reason why it was called "Portrait" was because it mainly told the story of the criminal psychological portrait. The meaning of the portrait is multiple, it is the reshaping of the image of the offender, the reproduction of the criminal psychology, and the test of the portrait's own heart.
Everyone, no matter who they are, has their own inner world, some pure and clean, some deep and dark. This novel presents not only shocking and frightening murder cases, but also a deep heart that makes people think infinitely. Everyone has their own inner black hole, and the protagonist also has his own psychological gap that is difficult to cross.
In his first novel, The Seventh Reader, Fang Mu experiences his friends leaving one by one, and even witnesses his beloved girl being decapitated in front of him. Once, Fang Mu was also a cheerful, lively, and joking boy, but after experiencing too many stories, he became a taciturn and very strange person in the eyes of others. Xing Zhisen said that Fang Mu had the talent to perceive crime; Tai Wei also said that Fang Mu had such a talent, but the pain that this talent brought to Fang Mu was hard and difficult to describe. Perhaps, he is a genius, but behind the aura of genius is an inexplicable pain.
In "Portrait", there are many murder cases, people fang mu knows well, people who are not familiar with him, one by one died, before Fang Mu did not realize the connection between these deaths and himself, he could calmly judge and use his talent to find the murderer. When bad encounters have not fallen on them, anyone can be confident and calm, analyze the pros and cons, and deal with them calmly. However, once involved, from an outsider to an insider, the mind and emotions cannot be completely in the direction we want. When these innocent dead people died directly or indirectly because of him, the genius will also be dazed, will make mistakes, and have their own mental illnesses that need to be cured.
I remember a detail that Fang Mu often vomited, and this kind of vomiting was not because of physiological reactions, but for psychological reasons.
When Deng Linyue was about to be killed in the stadium, she also felt a fear of wanting to vomit, so was Fang Mu also afraid at all times?
Fear of the departure of friends; fear of the departure of lovers; fear of the murderous laughter hidden in the darkness. How could he not be afraid of that loneliness of being abandoned by the whole world. He thought he wasn't afraid, but he wasn't that strong.
Meng Fanzhe's trust and gratitude to him had tragic consequences due to Sun Pu's intervention; Du Yu's warm-hearted friendship with him was also broken by Zhang Yao's death; Deng Linyue left him because of fear; Tai Wei almost lost his life because of him. Going back further, his good friend who slept with him, Wang Jian, who had just established a friendship, and Chen Xi, who was in love, all left him. Once the lover is separated by life and death, the former brother is gradually drifting away, when love is overshadowed, friendship is soaked in killing, how much will be true and credible in life, and how to pray for peace in the heart. Whether it is a mistake in judgment of the case or a deviation in the interpretation of people's hearts, Fang Mu's passive avoidance of the world, decadence and low-end, are all excusable. Everyone has their own psychological black hole, even a genius can not fully enter the deep heart of others.
"When you gaze into the abyss, the abyss also gazes at you." This sentence comes from Nietzsche's The Other Side of Good and Evil. There are many understandings of the meaning of "abyss", which can be weakness or desire. In the face of other people's psychological crimes, detectives can draw psychological portraits of criminals. In the face of their own psychological illness, it is not difficult to find out the cause, but how to better face up to and seek a cure is not something that everyone can do. We can't erase our own flaws, we can't escape the entanglement of desire, but what we can do is face up to weakness, control desire, and let it be used for our own purposes.
Throughout the novel, there are many tearful moments, but what shocked me was Professor Joe's perseverance in the fire. Professor Joe does not appear in the story very often, and even some of them are annoyingly old-fashioned and harsh. But he was a highly respected professor, and at the same time an old man over the age of flower armor, imagining his hands clutching the railing, his gray hair trembling, enduring the pain of the burning fire and not saying a word, and I burst into tears.
After reading the novel, there is still a feeling of inexhaustibility, a novel without ghosts and wonders, but from time to time it makes people feel trembling and sweaty. Perhaps, in everyone's heart, there is a devil lurking there, spying on our weaknesses. Staring at the abyss for a long time, the abyss also looks back at us.
