Category: Uncategorized

https://youtu.be/YM8_AfeB7mk

1:50:30-1:53:30

The original content in the book is:

“Hsiang Lin’s Wife, that was really a bad bargain,” continued Liu Ma mysteriously. “If you had held out longer or knocked yourself to death, it would have been better. As it is, after living with your second husband for less than two years, you are guilty of a great crime. Just think: when you go down to the lower world in future, these two men’s ghosts will fight over you. To which will you go? The King of Hell will have no choice but to cut you in two and divide you between them. I think, really. . . . .”
Then terror showed in her face. This was something she had never heard in the mountains.
“I think you had better take precautions beforehand. Go to the Tutelary God’s Temple and buy a threshold to be your substitute, so that thousands of people can walk over it and trample on it, in order to atone for your sins in this life and avoid torment after death.”
At the time Hsiang Lin’s Wife said nothing, but she must have taken this to heart, for the next morning when she got up there were dark circles beneath her eyes. After breakfast she went to the Tutelary God’s Temple at the west end of the village, and asked to buy a threshold. The temple priests would not agree at first, and only when she shed tears did they give a grudging consent. The price was twelve thousand cash.

 

Here Liu Ma told Hsiang Lin’s Wife that what was going to happen to her after she died in some old belief. That belief was due to the ancient feudal dogma that a woman couldn’t marry two husband. And the reason was that women’s status was very low in the ancient times in China. So in a word, the feudal dogma was the reason of all of these tragedies happened on Hsiang Lin’s Wife.

First of all, I noticed that she doesn’t even have her own name. People called her by her dead husband’s name, which indicated that she was a lonely person and no one really cared about her. When her mother in law asked for hers salary. Her boss just gave her without hesitation. When she was robbed to be a bride, people around her cared about not but their own interests. Her life was played by her husband’s family. She was sold and slaved. Her life was so pathetic.

When her son was killed by a wolf, she was useless to her ‘family’. So she was able to come back to the Lu town once again. But her mental state was very poor. It is so heartbreaking that she kept talking about her son. She told her story repeatedly to people in town but no one pitied her. People’s hearts were cold and hard. Part of the reason was they despised her because she didn’t commit suicide.

Should she commit suicide? Maybe, but why didn’t she? Would it because there was no way to make things better by committing suicide? In a world that was so cold and dogmatic, she was just becoming insensitive. There was some hope in her heart that made her wanted to fight against the destiny. But she has already been unable to feel sad. In the previous part of her remarriage. She couldn’t even cry but she was just yelling all the way to her new house. So would suicide make things different for her? Maybe not because she has already became a person who was so insensitive.

However, when Mao was burned. There was some new hope in her life. Her son was her happiness. But eventually her happiness was gone. In the part that I chose, Liu Ma suggested her to buy a tredshold to redeem her ‘sins’. At that time, maybe she has already been thinking about dying. Because she wanted to reunite with her son. So she bought a tredshold.

This was also a pathetic scene because she was played by the feudal dogma but she deeply believed in it. This is also very touching because we can see there was a pure love of mother even in a society where was so cold and insensitive. However, it was also desperate because the cruel fate and the numb society would even give a hope to a mother who lose her son.

https://youtu.be/ntIyRKx2Tu0

19:14-22:14

Here we can hear that Oroonoko killed Imoinda before he took a engage on Byam. I can find an opinion of the author throughout the novel that death is better than becoming slaves. In the previous sections, the king told Oroonoko that Imoinda was dead. I think there is some reason here. I think that the king wanted to achieve his goal of letting Oroonoko fight for the country and for the king himself. On one hand, by telling him that Imoinda was dead could end Oroonoko’s hope that he could run away with her. On the other hand, the king didn’t want his general to hate him. So I guess that being a slave was worse than death at that time.

It was probably true. Being a slave meant something like hell for no matter men for women. But as for women, there were more meanings. They could become sex slaves and this was an extremely hard punishment for a woman. From the previous description of Imoinda, we know that she had a beautiful body and a beautiful soul. She was such an amazing creature who was loved by two of the most powerful men of that country. Those women who became slaves were human as the slave owners. They were loved and they were loyal too. They were well educated and they had so many noble qualities.

According to the book:

“……and taking Imoinda with him as he used to do in his more happy and calmer days, he led her up into a wood, where (after with a thousand sighs, and long gazing silently on her face, while tears gushed, in spite of him, from his eyes) he told her his design, first of killing her, and then his enemies, and next himself, and the impossibility of escaping, and therefore he told her the necessity of dying. He found the heroic wife faster pleading for death that he was to propose it, when she found his fixed resolution; and, on her knees, besought him not to leave her a prey to his enemies. He (grieved to death, yet pleased at her noble resolution) took her up, and embracing of her with all the passion and languishment of a dying lover, drew his knife to kill this treasure of his soul, this pleasure of his eyes; while tears trickled down his cheeks, hers were smiling with joy she should die by so noble a hand, and be sent into her own country (for that’s their notion of the next world) by him she so tenderly loved, and so truly adored in this: for wives have a respect for their husbands equal to what any other people pay a deity; and when a man finds any occasion to quit his wife, if he love her, she dies by his hand; if not, he sells her, or suffers some other to kill her. It being thus, you may believe the deed was soon resolved on; and ’tis not to be doubted but the parting, the eternal leave-taking of two such lovers, so greatly born, so sensible, so beautiful, so young, and so fond, must be very moving, as the relation of it was to be afterwards.”

This scene was just so heartbreaking. They were so close to success. But they lose just because they were kind and they had sympathy even for people who hurt them. Their love was so pure, Imoinda would rather die than being insulted. And they all know clearly that they would die for each other in their heart. When she died, all of his happiness was taken away. He was too sad to launch a war. He just got weaker and weaker in the bottom of the forest. That was not inspiring but that was so real. And that was a heartbreaking reflection of the history. Just like everyone else, Oroonoko was not just a hero, he was also a human who had so many emotions. Although the ending was unpredictable and frankly speaking I was a little bit disappointed. Because Imoinda’s death seemed like in vain. However, I gradually understand that history would never lie. There were so many failures in the fight against slavary. And this story just exposed the truth to people who was not awake. This novel is a work that contains very romantic imagination and it really makes me very sad. Although the background story looks somehow a little exaggerated and unreal. But I think the ending is a real reflection of history, which is admirable for a novel.

20:50—23:30

This part of the movie is highly similar to the original content in the book. After everyone left, Bartleby still ‘would not like’ to leave. He was insisting on something. But what is he insisting on? And why? This was exactly the question that the lawyer was wondering in the former part of the story. Although Bartleby always seemed like very thoughtful because he dared to say ‘no’ to his boss. At the end of the story, it turned out that he was actually a man that didn’t have his own opinion and he was just like a walking dead.

But there comes another question. If he really didn’t have any personal opinion, why would he keep saying ‘no’ instead of ‘yes’? The answer was given in the part I choose. He was not refusing to do something. He would “prefer not to make any change.” (Melville 25) At this point, the central idea of the author was revealed. His life was empty and was not meaningful at all. He doesn’t have any thought or any emotion. He was alive but his life was dead.

This ironical contradiction became more obvious when it came to the conversation between Bartleby and the lawyer. According to the original passage, his boss offered many possibilities for Bartleby including re-engaging in copying for someone, a clerkship in a fry-good store, a bar-tender’s business, traveling through the country collecting bills for the merchants and going as a companion to Europe to entertain some young gentleman with your conversation. Bartleby’s responds were ‘no’ of course. There were other possibilities but there seemed to no difference to him. This looked so strange and desperate for a living man.

The previous job of Bartleby was writing letters for the dead men. It was indeed a desperate job. Would this be an indication that this kind of job was so dead and people could barely endure them? I guess it was. Because Bartleby was just so desperate. It was amusing and it was sad.