The novel takes the "Garlic shoots incident" as the warp, and the life experiences of Gao Yang, Gao Ma, Jin Ju, Uncle Fang, and Aunt Fang as the weft, profoundly describing the survival of the peasants living at the bottom of the society from various angles and sides, as well as the tragedy caused by this story. It also analyzes the backwardness of rural culture, the poverty of thought, the dilemma of survival, and the reasons leading to the tragedies of "Uncle Fang's tragic death under the wheel" and "Jin Ju's suicide by hanging". The story does not follow the pattern that readers are accustomed to, but starts with the arrest of Gao Yang and Gao Ma by the police after the "Garlic Shoots Incident", and crosses the love story of Gao Ma and Jin Ju with the reality of Gao Yang's arrest and Gao Ma's escape. When the reader feels the despicable and shamelessness of the police, the selfishness of the township assistants, the malfeasance of the prefects, and the malpractice of the tax and industry and commerce in the confusing and vividly specific descriptions, the veil of the whole plot is also gradually lifted.
I, "garlic shoots incident" could have been avoided, but happened. "Garlic shoots" prices continue to increase, so that the leaders of the county of heaven saw the benefits, so heaven decided to plant a large area of garlic shoots. However, the decision makers ignored a series of problems later. When the garlic shoots stagnant, the people are anxious, the leaders not only did not come forward in time to solve the problem, but also hid themselves, unplugged the phone line, do not show up. At the same time secretly grasping the exploitation of the people, increasing the collection of more kinds of taxes and fees. When the people smashed the glass and cut the sofa to express their dissatisfaction, they still did not come out to solve the problem, but increased the height of the courtyard wall. The governor of Paradise County seems to be the emperor of a place, holding the hegemony of one side. In China, there is an old saying that a murderer pays for his life and a debt is repaid, but because the governor's car was killed, he can pay out a few thousand dollars to solve the problem, which has deepened the people's resentment.
Two, "high horse, Jin Ju" tragic love "garlic shoots event" is full of political criticism, and high horse and Jin Ju's love is the real tragedy of contemporary rural areas. The tragedy and the misalignment of the times, perhaps because it should not have happened but happened, but also more bloody pain in the heart. The tragic love between Gaoma and Jinju is in contrast to the free love in the city at that time, and there is a potential comparison between the city and the countryside, between civilization and ignorance. The root cause of the tragic love between Gao Ma and Jin Ju is the underdevelopment of the rural economy. The people live in poverty, and in order to reproduce, they have to take the form of exchanging relatives. In the old society, it seems normal for the exchange of relatives to take place, however, when the exchange of relatives takes place in the 80's, it seems unbelievable. Involuntary love and marriage, a topic that had long been discussed during the "May Fourth" era of enlightenment, was brought back to the forefront of our minds. The incompleteness of the "May Fourth" Enlightenment is worth pondering. More than seventy years have passed, but unfortunately, the bad customs are still there. Although the streets of the city are full of men and women who fall in love freely with each other, in the countryside, it is still the order of parents and the words of matchmakers. We marvel at the helplessness of survival. Only Jinju becomes a victim of the "three swaps" to find a daughter-in-law for her forty-year-old "big brother". She is at the mercy of her father, mother, and brothers to marry someone she does not love. She is exchanged, not as an individual, but as their private property, like an object, to fulfill their purposes. It is when she falls in love with Takuma that she lives for herself. Yet her efforts for her own happiness are rewarded by society's lack of acceptance, with even her father and brother not recognizing her as their kin. She escaped the world by committing suicide, defending something with her death defiance. She never let her and Takuma's child come into the world, even though the spirit child cursed its parents and couldn't wait to come into the world. She explains the cruelty of the world to the child through personal experience. Jin Ju has no peace even after her death, as the Fang brothers' greed for money leads them to solemnize her marriage. Behind the marriage is a backward, ignorant rural cultural tradition.
The horse-faced young man arrested by the police was detained in a tree by the roadside and killed by a passing car; the garlic shoots were not sold, but the fourth uncle was run over by the township secretary's car on his way home; the so-called death row inmate in the detention center was only hit by a stick because of unfair treatment, but he was sentenced to death and was finally executed by gunshot without success in the appeals; Jin Ju came to Gao Ma's home with four empty walls after Gao Ma was arrested, and hanged in the Gao Ma's house with her child who is about to be delivered. Jin Ju, after Gao Ma's arrest, came to Gao Ma's empty house and hanged herself on the doorframe of Gao Ma's house with her baby on the way to birth; Auntie Four, who was angry because of her partner's death and the lack of a fair judgment, set fire to the county government when she stormed the house, and did not receive appropriate medical treatment for her illness in jail, although she was finally released on medical parole, but she hanged herself after her in-laws who had changed their marriages had dug up Jin Ju's grave. Only Gao Yang, because of his cowardly and submissive personality, is able to survive in the labor camp. The other garlic farmers are also subjected to the "just judgment" of the law. Although at the end of the novel, the higher party organization discovers and corrects the bureaucratic practices in Tiantang County, and the relevant personnel are punished, the farmers' poverty and misfortune have not yet seen the light of day. With the conscience of an intellectual standing in the position of the peasants, the author unflinchingly describes the peasants' sorrows and humiliations with his pen, making the readers feel the cruelty and sadness of the reality in the thrilling images.
What is commendable is that in the work, although the author has written a Q-style personality of the high sheep, the law-abusing township assistants, harmful to the people of the people of the tax industry and commerce and so on all kinds of people, as well as let people hate wearing the coat of the ****-producing party without regard to the death of the people of the county mayor and the secretary of the county party committee and so on, so that people feel the heavy of the times, and at the same time also shaped the spirit of resistance to the high horse, and at the same time, although not much ink, but the military-born Zheng Zhengyeong, who is a member of the army, is the most important thing. At the same time, although not much ink is used, the defense of Zheng Laohan's son, who is a soldier, in the court, also shines with the light of truth. In fact, the image of that soldier is exactly the author's conscience and the voice of millions of people struggling at the bottom of society. As for those poor people, the author did not affirm them, but wrote about their ignorance and selfishness. Therefore, the author is criticizing the darkness of reality as well as the ugliness of human nature. With his sharp writing style, the author tears open the double skin of reality and human nature, and exposes the truth nakedly in front of the readers, which is deafening. Character psychological analysis
I. Character psychological lining
In the novel, Gao Ma and Jin Ju, as a pair of people in love, are quite rich in inner psychological activities, and Moyan has also fully expressed their psychological state, delicately portraying their inner state. At the same time of portraying their psychological state, a lively image of a red pony appears in the work. The red pony is closely related to the psychological changes of the characters, and through its activities, it sets off the psychological state of the characters from the side, and also increases the connotation of the work. The first time the red pony appears in the work is in the wheat field at night. The little red pony runs back and forth at the edge of the wheat field, making a pitter-pattering sound. The repetitive sound creates a sense of rhythm and tension, an atmosphere similar to Goma's mood at the time. In full view of the crowd, Takuma tentatively approached Jinju again and again, like a "revolution," making steady progress, succeeding in his attempts, and then advancing, creating a sense of rhythm like that of a battle. At the same time, it is risky and stressful to hold Jin Ju's hand in a crowded place. Jin Ju had been betrothed, which in the countryside was the equivalent of having established her conjugal relationship with the object, and to show affection for the betrothed Jin Ju would be despised by the village people. At the same time, whether Jin Ju likes himself, Gao Ma is not sure, because the two people just talked once, and in the following year, every time Gao Ma wants to talk to Jin Ju, Jin Ju will avoid. If Jin Ju doesn't like himself, and he grabs her hand rashly, and Jin Ju yells in the crowd, Goma will lose his reputation. Therefore, Gao Ma holding Jin Ju's hand in a crowded place was a big risk, and he was nervous to the extreme, even the fourth aunt's cough could make him fight a cold war, and his body cooled down. The pitter-patter sound of the colt's running echoed Gao Ma's internal and external nervousness, visualizing Gao Ma's extreme nervousness at the time. On the evening of the second day after the hand-holding, Gao Ma waited for Jin Ju in front of her house for her appointment. Uncertain whether Jin Ju was willing to come out to meet with her, Gao Ma was inwardly apprehensive. The pony sometimes runs into the ditch, and sometimes eats wheat stalks in a half-hearted manner, just as Gao Ma anxiously waits for his lover to show up, anxious and irritable inside. Jin Ju's door a sound, the high horse's heart in the throat, happy is finally someone out, and is likely to be Jin Ju. At this time, the pony was nervous and excited to gallop, hooves bouncing up the dirt hit on the wheat stalks to make a loud sound, can not hide the inner ecstasy. This was also the reaction of the high horse when he heard the door of Jin Ju's house open; was it Jin Ju? This is a crucial and nerve-wracking question. If the one who walks out is Jin Ju, then one's love has finally been responded to, and again, very worthy of joy. So, at this point, the high horse is both nervous and excited, and the actions of the red pony are set off against each other. The high horse's inner state is externalized through the actions of the pony, and there is a lively dynamic beauty.
II. Symbol of Hope
Enge once said "Man is supported in his own development by other entities, but these are not higher entities, not angels, but lower entities, animals." The little red pony appears repeatedly in the work, not only reflecting the inner activities of the characters, but also comforting Jin Ju and Gaoma when they are aggrieved or severely beaten, full of warm colors, giving them the motivation and hope to act and survive. Therefore, for Jin Ju and Gaoma, the little red pony represents hope and is a symbol of hope. After reading Jin Ju's marriage contract, Gaoma is ready to go to Jin Ju's house to explain the illegality of forced marriage, which is tantamount to "asking for death". As a saboteur of the Fang family's marriage contract, Goma has already thrown himself into the net by taking the initiative to go to the Fang family's house. If he then explains to the Fang family from his own point of view that the exchange of marriage is illegal and that they should be free to love each other, and that he and Jin Ju should be fulfilled, this is just like adding fuel to the fire, and a fight is very likely to happen. At the same time, as a disturbing factor affecting the realization of the marriage contract, Gao Ma's appearance in the Fang family and lobbying, which in the eyes of the Fang family is tantamount to a provocation and insult to their whole family, the Fang family will not be able to let it go! Gao Ma was very much aware of the danger of going to Jin Ju's house. However, he loves Jin Ju and is not willing to let Jin Ju marry the sick Liu Shengli. Therefore, he is very hesitant, the viciousness of the Fang family's father and son makes him step back, Jin Ju's tears motivate him to move forward. When he reached Jin Ju's doorstep, the date-red pony appeared in the wheat field, but the old horse's neighing made him gallop away. Goma becomes dizzy, and his confidence and desire to convince Jin Ju's family disappear without a trace, with very little hope of success. The red colt is linked to Takuma's inner beliefs, and its departure also suggests the disappearance of Takuma's inner hopes. After the beating, Takuma is left in the alley, and the red pony's comforting presence allows him to go to the township government the next day, despite his own injuries, to seek help from the government authorities. Not only that, but the pony gives Jin Ju hope. When Jin Ju was bringing home food for Auntie Four, the baby in her belly wanted to come out and see the outside world. Desperate Jin Ju described the outside world as scary things like garlic shoots and parrots as a way to stop the baby's desire to see the world. The little red pony sticks its head next to Jin Ju and licks it with its tongue to offer comfort to the desperate Jin Ju. Jin Ju pushes its head away to keep her resolve strong, lest her apathetic tone be shaken. When Takuma discovers that Jin Ju has committed suicide, he is in a state of mental collapse. Exhausted from hacking at the parrot, he hears the sound of hoofbeats and becomes so hyper that he can hardly contain himself, pleading with the pony not to go away, but the pony goes away from him and disappears into the darkness. The high horse begins to fall into madness and collapse, and begins to hate the holders of power. Even when he is falsely accused (putting all the charges against the horse-faced youth on his head), he no longer cares, and looks as if he is unattached and defiant to the end. The appearance of the little pony fills Jin Ju and Gaoma with hope for love; the little pony gives them warm comfort when they are severely beaten, and brings warmth and care to Jin Ju's despair on earth. Therefore, in a certain sense, the pony is a symbol of hope. When the pony existed, Gaoma and Jinju had the courage to persevere, and when the pony left, Gaoma fell into despair.
Third, the witness of love
In "Song of Garlic Carette in Paradise", the red pony initially appeared in the wheat field, when Goma was ready to hold Jinju's hand, and the last time it appeared was in the moment of despair when Goma found Jinju's death, Goma's and Jinju's love was from the sprouting to the development to the resistance to the last Jinju gave up her life and love, in every stage of their love, the red colt appears and witnesses the development of their love. The first time Gaoma makes an act of love, the red pony pitter-patters across the wheat field as he prepares to grab Jin Ju's hand. When Gaoma asks Jin Ju to meet him, the red pony sees Jin Ju go out and runs happily, rejoicing. When Gao Ma wakes up after being knocked out and thrown into an alley by the Fang brothers, the first thing he sees is the red pony standing in front of him, and it rubs its mouth against the back of Gao Ma's hand, which serves as a comfort to Gao Ma. The two eloped and were brought back, and the red colt appeared in the chili pepper field in Cangma County, and saw the scene of the severe beatings that the two suffered. In the end, the red colt also experiences Jin Ju scaring the child in her belly from coming out to see the outside world, and eventually gives up her life and goes to her death
Narrative Technique
The body of the novel is an omniscient type of narration by the narrator. The novel disrupts the order of the stories and flexibly utilizes the techniques of intertext, flashbacks, and interludes to narrate the stories of Gao Yang, Gao Ma, and Aunt Fang Si's family respectively.
The Song of Garlic Shoots in Paradise lays out two clues to the development of the plot: one is the experience of Gao Yang, and the other is the tragedy of Gao Ma and Jin Ju, from the budding of their romance to the destruction of their love. The first chapter begins with the arrest of Gao Yang by the police after the Garlic Shoots incident and Gao Ma's escape, revealing the beginnings of these two threads. The second chapter goes back to the year before the Garlic Shoots Incident, when Gao Ma's romance with Fang Jin Ju began. The first, third, fifth, seventh, twelfth, fourteenth, sixteenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth chapters recount Gao Yang's experiences before and after the Garlic Shoots Incident in the present tense, where Gao Yang is arrested, escorted to the township government, taken to the county in a prison van, held in a detention center, sick in prison, and tried in court, all in chronological order. The chronological account of Gao Yang's experiences is also interspersed with Gao Yang's recollections of his teenage suffering, the death of his mother, his blind daughter, his wife in labor, his newborn son, and other family circumstances. The second, fourth, sixth, eighth, tenth, eleventh, thirteenth, seventeenth and other chapters, mainly about Gao Ma and Fang Jin Ju's romance, is the past perfect tense narrative, the exchange of marriage, elopement and escape, caught and beaten, Jin Ju hanging, Gao Ma's involvement in the garlic shoots incident, etc., are flashbacks. The two time clues merge in Chapter 13, when the hunted Goma returns home and sees Jinju hanging herself, he is filled with grief and anger, and entrusts the neighbors to take care of the aftermath, which seems to be the fulfillment of his heart's desire, and so he surrenders his hands to the police. After a brief overlap, Chapter 14 is another flashback, recounting the death of Uncle Fang Si in a car accident. Eventually, the two time clues converge at the court trial. These two temporal clues go hand in hand, driving the story forward, while Aunt Fang Si's story is made complete by the interweaving and advancement of these two narrative clues. Although these two clues are centered on Gao Yang and Gao Ma, they actually tell the stories of three families. This method of narrating the stories of the characters separately is very close to the narrative technique of "two flowers bloom, each with its own branch" in ancient chapter books. In the narrative, the present tense of the scene and the past tense of the characters' review of their past experiences cross over, staggering the changes in the characters' destinies. This kind of multiple conversion of narrative angle, structural time and space interlacing and editing, can show the charm of the narrative. In the narrative structure of Song of Garlic Shoots in Paradise, the narrator, with his own conscience, righteous indignation against bureaucracy and sympathy for the peasants, truthfully explains the main reason for the occurrence of the garlic shoots incident.
The last chapter of the novel, Chapter 21, is the newsletter, commentary and editorial of the Daily Mass, which explains the results of the Garlic Shoots incident, the thoughts triggered by the incident, including the lessons to be learned. This chapter criticizes both the serious bureaucracy and dereliction of duty of the leaders of the Tiantang county party committee and county government in ignoring the interests of the masses, which ultimately led to the mistakes in the garlic shoots incident, and the unlawful acts of smashing, robbing, and setting fire to the county government building, pointing out that one cannot use anarchism to counteract bureaucracy, and the necessity of punishing a few unlawful elements, and giving an account of the Tiantang Garlic Shoots Incident from the official standpoint and perspective. In front of each chapter of the novel, there are fragments of songs sung by Zhang Buckle, a blind folk artist from Paradise County. Zhang Buckle is an experiencer of the Garlic Shoots Incident, and these songs of his present the causes and consequences of the Garlic Shoots Incident, and the process of bureaucratic oppression of the people. Zhang Buckle's lyrics are a fierce attack on the bureaucrats' disregard for the interests of the people, which caused the garlic shoots to rot in large quantities, and they are full of righteousness, grief and indignation. The author wrote in chapter 20 that Zhang Buckle was threatened and killed because of singing "Song of Garlic Shoots in Heaven", which is the folk angle and position. The narratives made from these three perspectives and positions are all some kind of ideological discourse. The lyrics of Zhang Buckle's song are folk ideological discourse, or "grassroots" discourse in today's terminology; the narrator is the spokesman of elite ideology; and the article in the Daily Populace is a typical official discourse. The narrators are spokespersons for elite ideology; the articles in the Daily Populous are typical of official discourse. With their respective positions and narratives, they form a chorus of voices. Whether it is right or wrong is for the reader to comment. At the same time, these three narrative discourses also form three texts. These newspaper newsletters, reviews and editorials, as well as Zhang Buckle's chorus, merge with the novel to form a multiple text. Alluding to the structural realism of Peruvian writer Vargas Llosa, the cross-genre format subverts the traditional novel genre model.
Mo Yan in Song of Garlic Shoots in Paradise inlays into other genre types, such as Zhang Buckle's singing belongs to the rhyming genre of folk rap, which is also an orally transmitted literary genre. None of the articles in Chapter 21, "The Mass Daily," is a literary genre, with the news reports belonging to the journalistic genre, and the commentaries and editorials belonging to the political essay genre, and characterized by their respective genres in terms of linguistic form of expression. The body of the novel, on the other hand, belongs to the traditional narrative genre. These various genres are combined in a narrative structure, constituting an inter-genre novel. Although these different genres are in the same novel body, they still maintain their independent personalities and have their own genres' discourse styles, and at the same time, they do not affect the stability of the overall structure of the novel. Through the interspersing and combining of different genres, the novel breaks through the norms of traditional genres, so that readers can feel the unfamiliar and fresh aesthetic experience brought by this brand-new form of genres in the cross-referencing of multiple genres. The texts formed by these different genres in the novel have both the spatial combination relationship between the texts and the temporal aggregation relationship between the text at this time and the text at the other time. For example, the narrator's account and the newspaper article are both narratives after the garlic shoots incident, past perfect tense; whereas Zhang Buckle's singing is immediate and present tense. The intersection of multiple texts, mutual reference, mutual influence, and mutual corroboration show the landscape of intertextuality, and also make the garlic shoots incident to be presented in three-dimensional form. The way the multiple texts are structured turns the closed text of the traditional novel into an open text. Zhang Buckle's chants and the articles in the Daily Populace serve to supplement the body of the novel, but they can also stand on their own. The reader can read Zhang Buckle's chants as a separate reading unit by linking them before each chapter, or he or she can read the newspaper article, Chapter Twenty-One, directly. The reading of both texts provides a general understanding of the passage of events and can be corroborated with the body of the novel. Such an open text enables the creativity of the reading subject to flourish. In this way, the novel presents the incident of garlic shoots in paradise comprehensively and three-dimensionally in front of the readers from three different perspectives and three different standpoints with three texts. Which one of these three texts is closer to the truth, modernism believes that objective narrative discourse does not place the event in a transparent space, which provides the event with the possibility of diverse narratives. Mo Yan does not intend to reproduce the process of the Garlic Scarepipe Incident, nor does he aim to reveal the truth of the incident. The writing of the novel does not accomplish the revelation of the truth, but in Barthes' words, it creates a "reality effect". This "reality effect" can also be described as realism in novel writing. In order to satisfy the requirement of realism, the author can fictionalize. Because the reproduction of events is a mixture of the real and the possible. It can be said that these three texts stand in their own positions, from their own perspectives, using their own ways of discourse narrative, all enrich the reader's understanding of the "garlic shoots incident".
In the process of the novel's narration, Mo Yan synthesizes the western modernist techniques of association, memory, hallucination and nightmare to show the inner world of the characters, and intermingles them with the national traditional narrative style, making his narrative method appear to be staggered and rich in color. For example, the situation in which Uncle Fang Si goes to the township to seek justice after being killed in a car accident is presented through Aunt Fang Si's memories in jail. Chapter 10, Jin Ju's conversation with her unborn baby, Chapter 12, Gao Yang's meeting and conversation with his mother in his dream, and Chapter 13, Gao Ma's conversation with Jin Ju's corpse, are obviously not traditional narratives, but have a strong modernist coloring. There is also Chapter 7, in which Gao Yang is forced to drink his own urine by a middle-aged prisoner in a prison cell, causing him to recall the experience of drinking his own urine when he was a teenager, and then in Chapter 12 he associates it with his encounter with the head of the police force who forced him to drink his own urine when he was locked up in the brigade headquarters after his mother's death. The memories and associations of the two pieces of life triggered by the drinking of urine explain all the sufferings and humiliations he encountered due to his birth as a landlord, and also outline the changes in Gao Yang's life path over the decades. In Chapter 15, Auntie Fang meets with Uncle Fang in her dream in jail, and after waking up, she recalls the shameless and despicable behavior of her two sons after Uncle Fang's death. These memories, associations, and nightmares are pauses in the normal narrative process, completed in an instant, and do not affect the story's progression. The flow of consciousness of these characters, which occurs without the knowledge of others, can be said to be false writing as well. However, this kind of fictional writing can be used as a supplement to real writing, presenting some events that have not yet been written in the normal real narrative, making the narrated story more complete and meticulous. Interwoven together, the fictional writing and the actual writing form a complete narrative whole. The blind man Zhang Buckle is a role that cannot be ignored in the narrative structure of the novel. He is the creator and singer of "Song of Garlic Shoots in Paradise". At the same time, he is also a character in the novel, a narrator. The romance between Goma and Jinju begins with watching Zhang Buckle's concert. Chapter 16 describes how Zhang Buckle sings in the square about the grievances of Uncle Fang Si, who was killed in a car accident, and how he points out the way out to the governor of the county for the people's grumbling masses. Chapter 20 explains the tragic death of Zhang Buckle, who was convicted for his words. The role of this character in the novel is somewhat similar to that of the old rag collector in Jia Pingwa's The Waste City. The old rag collector sings a popular tune, which obviously also has the meaning of criticizing reality. However, this character is outside of the storyline and has no significant connection with the overall structure of the novel. Zhang Buckle, on the other hand, is an indispensable aspect of the novel's structure, and his role is incomparable to that of the old rag collector in The Waste City. Zhang Buckle's role is similar to that of the mangy monk and the lame Taoist in Dream of the Red Chamber. A monk and a Taoist are the pivot of the plot of Dream of the Red Chamber, and whenever Baoyu is in trouble, both of them will appear and play the role of a needle and a thread in the development of the plot. However, Zhang Buckle does not have the ability to foretell the past and future lives of the monk and the Taoist, and his role in the development of the plot is not obvious. However, he is the experiencer and participant of the garlic shoots incident, when the garlic farmers gathered in the square, he sang "the child cried and hugged his mother, can't sell the garlic shoots to go to the governor", to become the instigator of the garlic shoots incident, and consciously for the people's advocate. His song has both the masses because of the planting of garlic and the joy of wealth, but also on the grass-roots officials of the indignation of tyranny, but more is due to the government as a result of the stagnation of garlic shoots rot and inspire a full of righteous indignation.