To be alive is a novel that makes people feel heavy to read. The dullness and unhappiness you feel only when you close the book is not caused by the cruelty of the story provided by the work. After all, the stories of broken families, separated families, and white-haired people sending black-haired people are not sensational.
At the same time, Yu Hua is not a writer with strong incitement ability. In fact, rendering such an expression has always been Yu Hua's disdain. Yu Hua advocates narration, telling some abnormal stories in an almost cold style. And all emotions quietly invade the reader's reading in this narrative process. In this way, Living completes the philosophical inquiry of the meaning of life with an incisive expression.
Extended data
Creative background:
From the late period of Kuomintang rule to the liberation war, land reform movement, steel-making movement and natural disasters, the author experienced embarrassment and misfortune brought by many movements, and even witnessed his wife and children die in front of him again and again.
Later, the author heard an American folk song "Old Slave", in which the old slave experienced a lifetime of suffering and his family left him first, but he still treated the world kindly without a complaint. This song touched the author deeply, and the author decided to write a novel like this, so there was 1992 "Living".
Write about people's tolerance for suffering and optimism about the world. People live for living itself, not for anything other than living.