There were often men in My mother's house, and she stopped avoiding me. Their eyes looked at me like dogs, tongues spitting out and drooling. I was more relieved in their eyes, I saw it. - "Crescent Moon"
"Crescent Moon" is a novella created by Lao She in the early days, born from his novel "Daming Lake". During his teaching at the university, he composed a tragic song of Daming Lake with passion, but unfortunately it was destroyed by the fire of war. He did not rewrite "Daming Lake", but broke and reshaped the whole story, retained the essence, and achieved a "Crescent Moon".
"Crescent Moon" tells the story of a pair of orphans and widows in the old society who depend on each other for their lives, and eventually take turns to degenerate into a secret prostitute. The novel is narrated in the first person, and the protagonist "I" goes from resenting his mother for degenerating into prostitution, to gradually understanding his mother, and then to regaining his mother's old profession, revealing the naked truth of the old society of "eating people without spitting bones".
In "Crescent Moon", Lao She goes against the custom and sets his sights on the dark prostitutes at the bottom of society, a profession that is not allowed by traditional concepts. Lao She did not attack the existence of dark prostitutes, on the contrary, he described the bitterness and grief of dark prostitutes throughout the text. In his works, he "took justice on their behalf and described their good qualities."
In 1986, the novel was adapted into a movie and put on the big screen, and the protagonist "I" was also named "Yue Rong". Due to the profound ideological theme, this film still maintains a high score of 8.0 on Douban and receives rave reviews.
When he was 7 years old, his father unfortunately passed away, and Yue Rong could only rely on his mother for his life. Although my mother worked day and night, washing clothes and socks all day, she was unable to support the family. When spring came, they would take off their cotton jackets and send them to the pawnshops in exchange for meager silver money to make ends meet.
It was the hardest day for Yue Rong and her mother, and she always looked up at the crescent moon in the sky. In the vast world, only the pure crescent moon can give her a little comfort.
At this time, although she was destitute, she lived frankly, she was like a crescent moon in the sky, although she was wrapped in darkness, she was still pure and beautiful, stubbornly emitting a weak light.
Later, her mother remarried with Yue Rong. The new father was very kind to them, providing them with food and drink, and also providing for Yuerong to go to school. It was a brief moment of happiness for them.
Unfortunately, in the year when Yue Rong was about to graduate, the new father quietly left. The family that has lost its main heart bone again is once again facing disintegration and analysis.
Yue Rong thought that her mother was going to regain the business of "washing smelly socks", but her mother not only did not shed tears, nor did she worry about it, but dressed up in a fancy way and smiled.
Yue Rong could vaguely guess that her mother was doing secret prostitution, but she could only pretend to be confused. She despised the profession, but she had to rely on her mother. "I can't hate her anymore, I have to hate her." My heart is like that crescent moon, it can only light up for a while, and the darkness is infinite. ”
At this time, Yue Rong's heart was hard, but due to economic embarrassment, she had to succumb to reality and accept a mother who was engaged in the profession of secret prostitution. That's why she compares herself to a crescent moon, and although her heart is bright, she is always in boundless darkness.
Finally, when her mother was too old to sell anymore, she decided to sell the rest of her life to someone. So, she gave Yue Rong two cruel choices:
First, either the monthly appearance is sold to maintain the life of mother and daughter;
Second, the mother married, but she could no longer carry the moon, and since then the mother and daughter have been separated and there has been no contact.
Yue Rong understands her mother's choice, but she does not want to fall, and finally chooses to defect to the principal. She helped with writing at school in exchange for two meals a day and a place to live, while her mother left on her own on a dark and windy night.
Yue Rong heard that among the female classmates who graduated in the early days, some became aunts and wives, and some became prostitutes. It seems that women in this dark society want to ask for survival, "either sell meat or sell their bodies", which is really sad and ridiculous!
From then on, the life of the moon was only dark, and even the crescent moon disappeared. Sometimes, although the crescent moon appeared, she no longer dared to look at it squarely, because she felt that her life was hopeless.
Later, the school changed its new principal, but no one was able to take care of the moon. She defected to the fat headmaster's nephew, a gentle and lovely young man who fed and drank her and gave her clothes, and she was fascinated by his care. "I forgot myself, I didn't have myself... I lost that crescent moon, I lost myself, I was the same as my mother! ”
If this transaction still has the "love" component as a fig leaf, but after the arrival of the "little porcelain man", this feeling has become a complete joke.
The "little porcelain man" is the young man's wife, who begs Yue Rong to leave her husband, and Yue Rong agrees, so she becomes the "number two" waitress of the restaurant. She couldn't learn the "number one" waitress to serve men, so she once again dropped her job.
Under repeated blows, Yue Rong forgave her mother's behavior that year. She began to understand her mother and fell into deep thoughts.
Just when she was disheartened, she met the "little porcelain man" and learned the story of her and the youth. It turned out that the two had once fallen in love freely and married for love. But after marriage, the young man spent time and again outside drinking, and now he has changed another woman, and he has not even returned home.
At this meeting, the moral baggage on Yue Rong's body was completely abandoned. It turns out that in the dark society, women who want to be free will not have food, and if they want to eat, they are doomed to have no freedom. People always have to lose something in exchange for what they want.
That being the case, she decided to "play", she "didn't want to sell herself exclusively to a man". She finally became a prostitute and followed her mother's old path, taking on a profession she had previously scoffed at.
She sold to civilized people, to little bastards, to students, to old men... The absurdity of life made her sick, and just as she was abandoning herself, she reunited with her mother.
Her mother took good care of her, and her body healed again. Since then, the two mothers and daughters have once again relied on each other for their lives.
However, the identity has changed dramatically: in the past, it was the mother who sold meat to raise her daughter, and now it has become the daughter who sells meat to support the mother.
Wang Xiaobo wrote in the Golden Age, "I was twenty-one years old that day, in the golden age of my life. I have a lot of extravagant hopes. I want to love, I want to eat, and I want to turn into a half-light and half-dark cloud in the sky in an instant. Later, I learned that life is a slow process of being hammered, and people grow old day by day, and their extravagance disappears day by day. ”
The life of Yue Rong's humiliation is the true portrayal of this sentence. Fate went around in a big circle, but in the end it returned to the original choice. "Either sell meat or sell her body", Yue Rong was once stubborn and struggling, she was unwilling to succumb to fate's arrangement, but still bowed her head in the face of cruel reality.
Hugo once said, "Poverty debases men, hunger corrupts women, and darkness weakens children." When a poor and vulnerable woman is alone in a dark society, she is left with only the result of being "oppressed" and "humiliated."
Yue Rong gradually degenerated from a simple, kind, and morally minded girl into an involuntary prostitute, although she had a clearer understanding of this "cannibalistic and not spit bones" society than her mother, and had tried to resist, but the resistance was weak, and she was eventually swallowed up by the dark society.
Yue Rong's life is sad, and her self-willed depravity is also a sigh, but in the final analysis, what really caused the tragedy of Yue Rong was the darkness and evil of the old society, which created the tragic fate of women at the bottom of society.
Reading books to see sentient beings, watching movies to see all kinds of things. Welcome to follow my account @ Shallow Talk Book Shadow, take you to talk about Book Shadow together.