Text|Furukiyuki
Editor|Furukiyuki
Preface:
Yu Hua's six works contain a large number of children's imagery.
Taking Yu Hua's novel as the starting point, this article attempts to explore the common characteristics and personality characteristics of children in Yu Hua's works, and discovers the writer's deep understanding of family and society from children.
1. Identity and variability
The children Yu Hua portrays are not stereotypical characters, they share many common characteristics, but they are all unique due to their differences in personality and experience.
There is consistency in one's thinking, so it is inevitable that the same author will have something in common in his different writings.
Yu Hua has written a large number of literary works, and in his novels, his children have many similarities in their family backgrounds and living circumstances.
Moreover, some children's names also have a lot to do with their parents' names, which makes people feel a strong love from Yu Hua's words.
In Yu Hua's work, the children's names reflect the financial conditions and personality characteristics of their parents.
In "Alive", Fugui's eldest daughter is named "Fengxia", Fengxia is when Fugui's family is the richest, and "Xia" and "Feng" are the best proof.
Fugui's son Youqing was born after Fugui lost his family business, and the meaning of "qing" and "congratulations" and "congratulations", and the words "youqing" reflect the psychology of Fugui's family eagerly looking forward to getting out of poverty.
The deaths of Feng Xia and Youqing are a vivid portrayal of the Fugui family from prosperity to decline. In Yu Hua's work, the child's name and the father's name also correspond to each other.
In "Xu Sanguan Selling Blood", the protagonist's name is Xu Sanguan, and the word "view" in it represents views and opinions.
It just so happened that Xu Sanguan's three sons were named Yile, Erle, and Sanle, and they all had a "Le" in their names, and this "Le" was a positive emotion in the hearts of Xu Sanguan and his wife.
The names of the two children are the same as the names of the two children, both are a "guan" character, and it can be seen from this that Yu Hua is very careful when portraying this character.
On the other hand, the child's name also reflects the personality of the parent. Li Lan once said in the movie "Brother": "The tiger father has no dog son, and Song Gang inherited his father's loyalty and benevolence." ”
This text draws a line between Song Gang and his father, making people subconsciously think that Song Gang is a good father and son. Li Guangtou's real name is Li Guang, and Li Guangtou's mother calls him Li Guangtou, which is also because of the amorous nature he learned from his father.
Li Guangtou and his father peeked at the woman's affairs in the women's toilet and were laughed at by the people in the village, and Li Lan has always been the object of ridicule in the village.
Because prisoners in prison have to shave their hair in prison, the symbol of "bald head" is closely related to the identity of prisoners, which means that the symbol of "bald head" has a certain condemnation.
This name can be understood as Li Lan, who has a weak personality, complaining to her late husband, and it can also be understood that she uses this name to express her dissatisfaction with Li Guangtou and his father's peeping.
In Yu Hua's work, the child's name is not only a code word for the children themselves, but also an indirect way for the writer to portray the role of parents.
The connection between children and parents is not only bloodline, but also high in name, character and social status.
In Yu Hua's six novels, there are more than thirty images of children. Among them, there are 12 children from farmers' families and 13 children from workers' and peasants' families.
This setting shows that the children live in a poor family that puts food and clothing first. When people from different families meet, a sense of class hierarchy takes root in the hearts of the children.
People in the city eat pickles just like people in the countryside, but in the city, when faced with the same things, additives are used to express the difference between urban and rural areas.
The more common things are, the more they can reflect the differences between people, and children can only passively accept the impact of reality.
This is an indirect way of living that suggests differences in treatment due to differences in family origin, and when children generally enter the discourse of social interaction, they will find that people are inherently unequal.
Sun Wei's father was prosperous in the early days of the Cultural Revolution, and later his father was identified as a "capitalist", and his father was also unlucky.
Because of the change in his fatherhood, Sun Wei changed from a respected little rascal to a dejected, low-key child, and Sun Wei's change reflects that in this world, people are pursuing power and money.
Many of the children in Yu Hua's works come from families living at the lowest level, and the limited social resources they have access to doom them to experience various hardships.
In Yu Hua's 6 novels, many children's childhood lives are magnificent.
Materially, because society is very productive, has many family members, and parents have little income, most children suffer from hunger or fight for limited resources.
After Xu Sanguan sold his blood, he took his family to the restaurant to eat noodles, because selling blood could not earn anything, and Yile's identity was not ordinary, so Xu Sanguan was very disgusted with Yile, and he lived alone by nibbling sweet potatoes.
This is not only because of their physical condition, but also the psychological condition of some children.
In "Wencheng", Xiaomei was sold to the Shen family by her parents because of her poor living conditions and became a child bride. Xiaomei's parents did this firstly to reduce their financial pressure, and secondly, to win glory for their marriage with the Shen family.
Xiaomei, who has lived in someone else's house since she was a child, under the control and discipline of Cuong's mother, Xiaomei's nature is suppressed, like a gorgeous wedding dress, buried deep in the closet, and cannot show her most beautiful side at all.
His mother gave birth to Yang Fei in the train bathroom, he accidentally fell on the rails, and Yang Fei was born without his mother's care. And the righteous father also because Yang Fei never married, in Yang Fei's childhood, his family has always been fragmented.
There are also children who, due to the irresponsibility of their parents, are mentally tortured. Xu Yile's biological father is He Xiaoyong, and Xu Sanguan vented all his anger and unwillingness on Yile's head after knowing the cause of the matter.
Yile was insulted by Xu Sanguan, detained, thrown out of the house by Xu Yulan, and rejected by He Xiaoyong, because of his identity, he has experienced emotional tribulations in the family since he was a child, rejected by the closest people, and hit him again and again.
The children in Yu Hua's works share many of the same characteristics in terms of gender names, family backgrounds and experiences, which not only reflect the writer's creative habits, but also reflect Yu Hua's overall summary of real life.
Social life is often intertwined and brought together by the lives of various individuals, so the life experiences of these characters with distinct personalities of writers are also worthy of our attention.
There are many children in Chinese novels, and here, we will focus on selecting some children with distinctive personality characteristics for analysis.
In Yu Hua's novels, there are many children's characters, and their characters all show adult trends.
The adult trend of children has two characteristics: one is that children do not have enough understanding of the rules that exist in the adult world, and the other is that children's personality rapidly evolves into "superego".
This skill of buying cigarettes in advance to buy drivers is because of his experience traveling with his mother as a child. Although he is still young, he has already begun to earn money and stand on his own.
As soon as he fell in love with a girl at first sight, he came to the door to propose marriage with a hint of anticipation, although it was just a joke in the eyes of the girl's parents, but for him, it was something that a "social person" should do. In social activities, due to the limitations of the actual situation, some children have to adapt to the adult communication order in advance, and at the same time, they will also be rejected and suppressed by adults.
Their imitation of adults also reflects the weakness of children in social activities.
In Freud's "personality system," the highest level of personality is the "self."
In essence, the superego refers to the influence that humans inherit from others, and it is an admirable and emulated social ideal. Because the fever was not treated in time, Fengxia, who lost her hearing, became a burden for her family.
When Youqing was about to enter school, Fugui and his wife planned to give Feng Xia away to raise to reduce the family's expenses. Fengxia's obedience does not mean that she fully supports this decision, on the one hand, she is very sympathetic and knows that her father and mother are willing to pay her own price to improve the living standards of her family in order to support the family.
And she is well versed in the moral etiquette of "following the father at home", and under his powerful rule, her complaints and complaints are in vain. From an outsider's point of view, Fengxia's willingness to sacrifice herself is precisely a sign of her character developing towards "detachment".
In Yu Hua's works, Yu Hua's children not only have different growth backgrounds, but also the living environment they live in constitutes the "kingdom" of the children in the works.
Second, the image of rural and urban children
The child's living space can be divided into two types, one is the family environment that exists as a family, and the other is the social environment that exists as a member of society.
In the process of children's growth, parents' upbringing of children is the main thing, which causes children to rely on parents.
Economic supply and affection are the bonds between children and parents, but in some specific situations, due to emotional closeness, this bond will be redefined, and parents' repression of their children will be broken by many factors.
Until children are truly involved in the productive labor of society, their lives depend on their parents. Because "the economic base determines the superstructure", the status of children in the family is so low that they have to follow the orders of their parents.
In "Alive", Youqing was beaten by Fu Gui for opposing marrying his sister to an outsider, and finally begged his father for forgiveness. Under such a huge gap in strength, Youqing could only obey his father's arrangement.
From this we can see how parents use violence to maintain their power at home. When children do something wrong, or need their help, they tend to show their kindness to their parents.
In "Xu Sanguan Selling Blood", Xu Sanguan's feelings for Yiyue changed from love to hatred after knowing that Yiyue was not his own flesh and blood, and Yiyue tried to please his father in order to calm his father's anger.
The child's "flattery" and "pleading" are the adults' suppression of the child's "words", and the "courtship" is the child's efforts to ease the distance between the parents.
Adults get satisfaction and weakness from their flattery, making children more controlled by adults.
epilogue
The children in Yu Hua's works have certain commonalities, but they also have their own characteristics. Although children's social activities are few, readers can still peek into the living conditions of people in a certain period through the children's life trajectories, and experience the complexity of social life.
In Yu Hua's works, we make a new examination of the child's family, society and human self, which may be the meaning of "child" in Yu Hua's work.
[References]
[1] Yu Hua: "Brothers"
[2] Freud, Compendium of Psychoanalysis
[3] Yu Hua: "Xu Sanguan Selling Blood"
[4] Yu Hua: "Literature and Literary History"
[5] Jiang Yu, Song Jianhua: "Citizen Father" in Modern Chinese Fiction