"I Am a Cat", as the debut and masterpiece of the Japanese literary hero Natsume Soseki, has always had a lot of popularity and a wide audience, and some of its contents have even been selected into the textbook of elementary school Chinese, which makes me remember it vividly.
And "I Am a Cat" can stand out because of the theme of the times it reflects, as well as the innovative protagonist design.
Imagine, in a group of novels that are all protagonists and narrators of love and hatred between people, a novel with a protagonist as a cat suddenly pops up, and this cat still judges human words and deeds in a playful tone.
When the reader reads that the cat feels that the human face is "like a round copper pot boiling water", he will find this novel point of view very interesting; when he reads that the cat has a discordant relationship with the cat of the coachman's family, and loves the female cat of the female master's family, "Sanmao Girl", he cannot help but smile and think that the cat cannot escape the fate of being bound by these social relations. As for the cat's teeth due to stealing rice cakes, no matter how hard they struggle, they can't get rid of it, and when they realize the three principles of cat life, these seemingly serious ideas are because of the funny plot.
Therefore, Natsume Soseki chose to look at the world with cat's eyes and judge everything he saw from the cat's point of view, which seemed to be the opposite, but he had already occupied the commanding heights in attracting the reader's interest.
However, it is worth noting that Natsume's attempt to do so seemed a bit outrageous at the time.
In the Japanese literary world at the beginning of the 20th century, naturalistic literature prevailed, and naturalistic writers demanded that authors must respond truthfully and objectively to real problems. And to make a cat the protagonist like Natsume Soseki, and to tell a story through a cat's mouth is undoubtedly a great rebellion against naturalistic literature.
Therefore, the reader feels very relaxed to read today, and thinks it is quite interesting, but at that time, the pressure on Natsume's stone was not small. After the end of "I Am a Cat", Natsume Soseki was violently attacked, and for this reason, he later wrote the novel "Grass Pillow" to express his creative ideas and declare war on naturalism.
Of course, both naturalism and Natsume's critical realism necessarily portray the dark side of reality.
And Natsume Soseki borrows the perspective of the cat, and naturally can more easily reflect the various problems that exist in real life.
Because the narrator is a cat, this novel usually uses the cat to listen and eavesdrop on the dialogue between the characters to show the character's personality, reflect the current situation, and sometimes express some views on the problem through the cat's own thoughts and thoughts.
Throughout the text, Natsume Soseki is describing no more than two kinds of people.
The first were the capitalists and their adherents, who were in the limelight at the time.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Japan, which experienced the Meiji Restoration, had already made vigorous economic development a top priority. However, it was confined to Japan and did not have a very good foundation for development, so the path of Japan's development at that time was actually somewhat deformed.
In addition to using the power of the state apparatus to concentrate funds, organize enterprises, and banks, the Meiji government also adopted a strategy of raising funds through war. In "I Am a Cat", there is a reference to the Russo-Japanese War. Natsume Soseki mercilessly ridiculed the Japanese government's slogan of fighting for the Yamato Soul, "What about the Yamato Soul is a triangle? What about the Yamato Soul being four-cornered? ”
The government pursues the concept of capital first, and the folk atmosphere is self-evident. In Japan at that time, the usury industry was extremely popular, and Kaneda in "I Am a Cat" relied on the issuance of usurious loans to seek huge profits, and eventually became a well-known local "industrialist".
But what is very interesting is that the exploited and oppressed people, not only have no complaints about the industrialists, but are willing to fall into the copper stink cage made of money, obeying the command of these vampires who stand on top of the blood and sweat of the people.
So, in I Am a Cat, we see a phenomenon that is very interesting. The masses of the people stand with the high-ranking capitalists, and the one who opposes them is another kind of people, the intellectuals represented by the protagonist Ku Shami.
The intellectuals who appear in "I Am a Cat" are actually only 5 people in total, but each character is very three-dimensional and has extremely distinct characteristics.
As a camp opposed to the capitalists, Natsume Soseki praised the intellectuals for their indomitable spirit. But at the same time, these intellectuals with flawed personalities are also the object of Natsume's satire.
The owner of the cat's house, Kusami, was not impressed even in the face of the Powerful Kaneda family in the neighborhood, and the courage and wind and bone displayed were indeed amazing. But Kusami also showed full weakness at certain moments, such as mistaking the thief for a policeman and nodding his head, and always failing to be tough in the face of mischievous students, and as a result, he made himself restless. Moreover, Kushami himself also has a very serious problem, that is, he is not rigorous in his studies, likes to pretend, and does useless work.
Mr. Mitsui, a close friend of Kushami, always talks and acts with a cynical look, often inventing things and taking pleasure in deceiving others. But such a seemingly optimistic role made me read a hint of "Ruan Ju rampant" feeling. If it is not incomprehensible to the world, who wants to do crazy things and walk outside the normal standards of human beings?
And this is also a major reason for the confrontation between the people and intellectuals.
The new intellectuals are not strong enough in their will, and even those who occasionally intend to help the people can only retreat into the background helplessly because of setbacks in reality, and are unwilling to go out of their way to enlighten the people's wisdom and emancipate their minds. Although they have progressive ideas, intellectuals can only passively adapt to reality, and of course cannot share the same path with the people.
In addition, Han Yuejun, who studies hanging mechanics and is obsessed with grinding balls, Dongfeng, a poet who likes to chant the wind and snow moon, and Du Xianjun, who has a negative attitude toward the world and refuses to progress Western thought, reflect another problem.
That is to say, what the intellectuals study is not based on the actual needs of the people, the already backward thinking of Du Xianjun is not mentioned for the time being, the "hanging mechanics" studied by Han Yue, and the male and female lovers obsessed with Dongfeng, which one is related to the problems that the working masses care about? Intellectuals shelved their theories and naturally could not win the support of the people.
The existence of the cat as the narrator actually hints to a certain extent the embarrassing situation of the intellectuals in the text.
Although the wisdom in the cat's brain is not inferior to that of humans, it has never caught mice, which coincides with the embarrassing situation of intellectuals delving into knowledge but knowing nothing about the most basic problems of life. Although the cat is brilliant, it is unable to convey its own views because of its language barrier, which is undoubtedly a hint to the intellectuals' detachment from the masses.
At the end of the story, the cat drowns in a water tank because of drunkenness, perhaps a hint to the future fate of the intellectuals who cling to their small circle.
With such an ingenious design full of intertextuality, coupled with the large number of discussions on life and social phenomena in the text, it is no wonder that Mr. Lu Xun commented that this novel is "unparalleled in the world".
But interestingly, as a representative work of Natsume Soseki, "I Am a Cat" is not outstanding in Douban, far inferior to his other works.
The reason why some readers are not optimistic about "I Am a Cat" is also worth analyzing, they generally think that this novel is too much Rory," and it tastes like chewing wax and making people sleepy.
It is understandable that the reader will feel this way.
Natsume Soseki actually only published the first chapter of "I Am a Cat" at the beginning, and had no intention of continuing to write. Later, because the story was too hot, readers strongly demanded a sequel, so Natsume wrote "I Am a Cat" into a long novel.
In addition, Natsume Soseki also adopted the Yuyu theory mentioned in "Grass Pillow" when narrating, that is, not hurriedly and slowly, calmly narrating.
This relatively loose narrative rhythm makes the whole novel look headless and endless, more like a "collection of essays" pieced together by many bits and pieces of ideas. From beginning to end when discussing a specific issue, the rigorous attitude of tracing back to the source will cause some readers who are not interested in the content of the novel to feel bored.
Therefore, it is not without reason that "I Am a Cat" is not optimistic about readers. But in fact, these questions do not become flaws in the novel itself. For this relatively free and loose narrative, some people read it with relish, and some people read it painfully. This is actually a representation of the reader's different preferences for the same content, rather than a question of whether the novel itself is well written or not.
Of course, "I Am a Cat" itself does have a flaw, that is, the inconsistencies in the narrative perspective.
The novel features a cat, and the full text is a first-person limited perspective, i.e., the cat can only narrate what it sees, feels, and thinks. However, in the text, there is a plot that directly narrates kushami's psychological activities, and the narrative perspective instantly changes from a first-person limited perspective to an omniscient perspective, which naturally makes people inevitably confused, how can the cat know what the owner is thinking? Although Mr. Natsume explains later in the text that the cat has mind reading, it is still impossible to justify it if you carefully compare it with the previous plot.
But for such a book that writes about the reality of modern Japanese society, actively explores ways to solve it, and proposes that the future citizens will be more personalized, and the number of suicides will gradually increase, the so-called narrative perspective problem is actually harmless.
To sum up in one sentence, the rating of "I Am a Cat" is not satisfactory, not the fault of the book, and readers who have opened it may feel very general, but those who have not yet read this book still have the possibility of finding insights in it and colliding their minds.