The abyss of humanity and spiritual redemption
——About Ai Wei's novel "In the Mirror"
Wang Chunlin
The understanding and excavation of "the various twists and turns of human nature and the existence of life" is the most essential feature of Ai Wei's novel creation. The novel "In the Mirror" (published in Contemporary Magazine, No. 2, 2022) carries out a unique and personalized excavation and expression of the proposition of "crime and punishment", which is one of the eternal themes of literature.
The whole novel begins with a car accident in which Yi Rong's face is destroyed by drunk drivers and both children in the car are killed. Prior to this, the daily life around the four main characters not only seemed calm and calm, but also a little bit of self-enjoyment. However, the sudden car accident ruthlessly unveils the disguise and disguise of happiness, leaving the four protagonists in the novel into a whirlpool of guilt. The first to be put on the moral and human trial bench was the genius architect Zhuang Runsheng. At the time of the car accident, he was meeting his lover Zi Shan in a hotel. When his wife Yi Rong after the car accident called him for help, the situation encountered was a shutdown. Although Zhuang Runsheng was later rushed to the hospital, he was unable to return to heaven, and it was impossible to change the cruel fact that the tragedy had already caused. Therefore, he firmly believes that the tragedy of the car accident is related to himself, and he feels that he must bear the corresponding guilt. So he took the initiative to break off his lover relationship with Zishan, but it was difficult to get rid of pain and guilt. Although learning from his friend Gan Shiping about the fact that his wife Yi Rong was drunk and driving briefly relieved Zhuang Runsheng's guilt, the fact that the family of three, including Yi Rong, who later committed suicide, attacked Zhuang Runsheng from time to time, causing him to have an indescribable sense of survival nothingness. After learning that Yi Rong and even his own children know the truth about his cheating, Zhuang Runsheng once again firmly believes that the tragedy of the car accident has nothing to do with him, and is once again overwhelmed by guilt.
Like Zhuang Runsheng, who is strongly entangled by some heavy sense of guilt, is Yi Rong, the direct perpetrator of the car accident, who sees herself as the "executioner" who killed a pair of children, and falls into deep self-blame: "Maybe she only deserves to have a skeleton-like grimace, live like a ghost in the human world, and do not deserve to be a person again." She also thought that if she died, she would only deserve to go to hell. Although he was in a state of loss of control after some kind of drunkenness, watching his sons and daughters die so tragically, even if he had great hatred for her husband Zhuang Runsheng in her heart, Yi Rong, as a mother, would not forgive herself no matter what. Under the writer's in-depth digging, we learned that the seemingly happy feelings of Zhuang Runsheng and his wife were actually full of holes. Yi Rong chose Zhuang Runsheng not out of love, but just to escape from the past life, she could not let herself fall in love with this man, and every day like an actor, she tried her best to play the role of a "good wife and mother".
The character who was also troubled by a certain sense of guilt was zishan who later left a foreign country. The reason why Zi shan has a sense of guilt is closely related to her identity as Zhuang Runsheng's lover: "Two years have passed in the blink of an eye. When she first arrived in New York, Zishan's mood was extremely bad. The facts are very clear, Yi Rong's accident is related to her, in the eyes of the world, she stepped into Runsheng's life with a disgraceful role, and she could not escape the guilt. "But while emphasizing Zishan's kind of collateral guilt, we need to review her and Zhuang Runsheng's somewhat unequal lover relationship here." Just as the so-called one thing drops one thing, if in the relationship between Zhuang Runsheng and Yi Rong, he is a fanatical suitor, then in his relationship with Zi Shan, Zi Shan has become a fanatical pursuer. It was precisely in Zishan that Zhuang Runsheng received some kind of psychological compensation.
"In the Mirror" was first published in Contemporary Magazine, Issue 2, 2022
I thought that Yi Rong was the biggest victim of this relationship, but in fact, Yi Rong, like Zhuang Runsheng, was a betrayer of marriage. Here we have to mention Zhuang Runsheng's friend Gan Shiping. Through Yi Rong's special email to Zi Shan before committing suicide, Ai Wei's pen turned to the revelation and expression of Gan Shiping's guilt that seemed to have been on the sidelines. But it turned out that in the car accident that seemed to be caused by Yi Rong's hand, the same could not escape the guilt, and Gan Shiping, who had already had an affair with Yi Rong behind Runsheng's back. It should be emphasized that between Yi Rong and Shiping, the first to take the initiative was Yi Rong. In the face of a strong offensive from Yi Rong, Gan Shiping, who had long been unable to clear Yi Rong's body image in his mind, finally lost it completely. Only when facing ShiPing, Yi Rong, who was drinking and chatting while drinking, confessed his basic emotional state to Runsheng: "I have not loved Runsheng", "Runsheng is a good person, kind hearted, still a teenager, but he is not the kind I like." The key problem is that although the relationship between Yi Rong and Shiping is completely worthy of being truly mutually pleasing, after all, Yi Rong is Runsheng's wife, and Shiping is also a good brother of Runsheng. In any case, the private affair between the two of them will not only cause harm to Runsheng, but also make them fall into a certain sense of guilt. What's more, after reading the email that Yi Rong left behind at the last moment, Shiping was shocked and had a very strong sense of guilt in his heart. Gan Shiping finally realized that the time had come for him to accept the punishment of fate and realize self-redemption...
In the novel, when Zhuang Runsheng designs the sea dojo for Yoko Yamaguchi, he pays attention to his own painful life experience: "Man and architecture are one, the heavens let him experience the sorrows of the world, and strive to let him learn compassion, he realized that whether it is him or Shiping or all sentient beings, who does not have sorrow in the human world? In any case, we have to admit that by this time, Zhuang Runsheng has finally achieved a valuable self-spiritual transcendence. The so-called "who has no sorrow in the human world" is a general inference in the sense of sin. In such a sinful world full of contradictions and conflicts, it can be said that everyone has sins. What to do? The only thing that is feasible is probably that, like Zhuang Runsheng, under the premise of realizing the existence of sin, through their own repentance, they will eventually obtain a spiritual possibility of salvation and obtain the rebirth and nirvana of life.
Special commentary of this journal
About the Author:
Wang Chunlin, born in 1966, is a native of Wenshui, Shanxi. Editor-in-chief of Novel Review, Professor of the College of Literature of Shanxi University, Vice President of the Chinese Novel Society, Vice Chairman of the Shanxi Writers Association, Judge of the Mao Dun Literature Award and the Lu Xun Literature Award. He has published his monographs and critical essays "Discourse, History and Ideology", "Thought on the Edge of Life", "Research on Novels in the New Century", "Literary Symphony of Multiple Voices", "Landscape of Novels in the New Century", "Map of Novels in the New Century", "Jia Pingwa 'Ancient Furnace'" Theory", "Rural Writing and Regional Literary Experience", "Unknown Heavenly Collection", "Contemporary Chinese Literature Scene", "Observation of Novels in the New Century", etc.
Editor of this weChat issue: Liu Yujie
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