Month: December 2018

Lu Xun’s “New Year’s Sacrifice” is a short novel, which demonstrates profoundly the true face of Chinese rural areas during that period. After reading it, my heart is very heavy. This article says that Xianglin’s wife is despised by everyone because her two husbands and child is dead. Even though she offers a threshold, but still does not change everyone’s contempt for her. Finally, she died in the Spring Festival (Chinese New Year).

The author uses flashbacks to create a persecution in feudal rituals. Spring Festival is the most important festival in China. In my memory, that is the happiest time of the year. I don’t need go to school. I could get red packets from elder. Parents prepare new clothes for me. and they buy everything I want. Xianglin’s wife choose that great moment to die. It is hard to know how tough her life is.

In the novel, “the very sky seems to proclaim the New Year’s approach.” The next day, “The sky became overcast and in the afternoon it was filled with a flurry of snowflakes.” However, “every family was busy preparing for the New Year sacrifice. This is the great end-of-year ceremony in Luzhen, during which a reverent and splendid welcome is given to the God of Fortune so that he will send good luck for the coming year.”  I believe author describes the bad weather forebodes a bad thing should happen later. As I know, Lu Xun published this novel on February 1927. It was after the Xinhai Revolution, also known as the Revolution of 1911. Lu Xun cheered the explosion Revolution of 1911 great enthusiasm, but he was disappointed soon. After seeing the Revolution of 1911, the imperial regime was overthrown. Meanwhile, it was replacing by the rule of the warlord bureaucrats of the landlord class. The foundation of the feudal society was not completely destroyed. The Chinese people, especially the peasants, became increasingly impoverished. They lived a life of hunger and cold, and the patriarchal concept and feudal ethics were still the spiritual shackles that were pressing on the people.

Xinglin’s wife was very tragic. At the age of twenty-seven, she became a widow, and she was a female worker for the Fourth Uncle. In the beginning, the image of Xianglin’s wife was printed in my mind. A woman who was full of hope of life. Working hard to survive and “Little by little the trace of a smile appeared at the corners of her mouth, while her face became whiter and plumper.” However, fate always treat people unfair. No matter how hard she is, she still could not get rid of the life of being manipulated by others. She became a tool for “mother-in-law” to make money. Later, she was forcibly married to sixth son of the ho family. As a result, her second husband was also dead. And the child was eaten by the wolf. Because of, at that time, people believed that good women did not marry two men, Xianglin’s wife was full of indifference and contempt. How ignorant! Even Xianglin’s wife, she believed that women can’t marry two men. She was afraid of she would meet two husbands after death. She asked Lu Xun, “Do dead people turn into ghosts or not?” and “Then will all the members of a family meet again after death?” When Lu Xun answered yes. She also thought they could meet in the hell.

When she sold to Ho family, Xianglin’s wife against it strongly. “She bashed her head on a corner of the altar, gashing it so badly that the blood spurted out. Even though they smeared on two handfuls of incense ashes and tied it up with two pieces of red cloth, they couldn’t stop the bleeding.” I should say how brave she is. She refuses to yield to fate. But, all of all, she is just an ordinary woman. She is unable to resist “destiny.”

The tragic fate of Xianglin’s wife makes me so sad. In fact, I believe they are more hatred towards that society. People was talking Xianglin’s wife like a joke after the meal. And the stubborn and indifferent attitude of the Fourth Uncle had made her fall into despair again and again. That makes me thinking, why people refuse to give her the opportunity to live a normal life for the last time.

There are enough to see what kind of ignorance, ruthlessness and numbness people in the society at that time. Xianglin’s wife finally became the victim of the fall of the society, and the defender of the feudal ethics represented by the Fourth Uncle, who executed the accomplice of her death. When she died on the New Year, the great sorrows and joys were united. Even the sky, the evening clouds and the firecrackers showed endless sorrow. The lively festive atmosphere is in stark contrast to the pale reality. Sadness is not only for Xianglin’s wife, but also for that society. The sad society that was destroyed by feudal thoughts, ethics.

People who have been deeply poisoned by feudal ethics seems like have already lost their sensation. The nature of “cannibalism” in feudal society is indeed hateful, and the ruthlessness of human nature has also been uncovered.

In the text book, “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 heroick wife faster pleading for death, than he was to propose it, when she found his fix’d 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 ador’d 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.”

“Oroonoko” is a short novel which is written by the female author Aphra Behn, who casts herself as a participant narrator. In the video, from 4:37 to5:35, the end of the tragic love story attracts me. I asked myself, what kind of love author wants to show us?

This tale tells the tale Prince Oroonoko becomes to the royal slave. Oroonoko is not just any old slave—he is the last descendant of a royal line. He is educated and ability to speak French and English. He is good at hunting, visiting native villages, and capturing an electric eel. In the story, love is the play’s dominant and most important theme. The play focuses on the love between Oroonoko and Imoinda. In the beginning, they cannot be a couple because Oroonoko’s grandfather wants to marry Imoinda. Imoinda refuses the old king. She also is punished for her actions and being sold as slaves. However, when English captain sells Prince Oroonoko as a slave to an English colony, Oroonoko meets Imoinda again. Then, they can live as husband and wife, and when she becomes pregnant, Oroonoko petitions for their return to their homeland. He organizes a slave revolt. Finally, he fails. Oroonoko has lost hope in returning home or living happily with Imoinda, and now only hopes to avenge his honor by killing his enemy. Before he avenges, he plans to kill Imoinda because of love. He does not want his unborn child is a slave. I believe it is a special love to his baby as well. Here, a fate worse than death.

Imoinda, in the beginning, is enforced to married to the old king, and she realizes that obedience is not always a form of love when free will is not present. In the end, She willingly accepts her murder at Oroonoko’s hand, happy to be able to prove her faithfulness. As we know, “love is a violent, ecsdtatic, overpowering force that supersedes all other values, loyalties, and emotions.”

As Maria Popova says, “Every generation believes that it must battle unprecedented pressures of conformity; that it must fight harder….” I want to say, we must fight harder than any previous generation to protect our soul.

Text book: “One day, when the sun shone on the red leaves that strewed the ground and diffused cheerfulness, although it denied warmth, Safie, Agatha, and Felix departed on a long country walk, and the old man, at his own desire, was left alone in the cottage. When his children had departed, he took up his guitar and played several mournful but sweet airs, more sweet and mournful than I had ever heard him play before. At first his countenance was illuminated with pleasure, but as he continued, thoughtfulness and sadness succeeded; at length, laying aside the instrument, he sat absorbed in reflection.

‘At that instant the cottage door was opened, and Felix, Safie, and Agatha entered. Who can describe their horror and consternation on beholding me? Agatha fainted, and Safie, unable to attend to her friend, rushed out of the cottage. Felix darted forward, and with supernatural force tore me from his father, to whose knees I clung, in a transport of fury, he dashed me to the ground and struck me violently with a stick. I could have torn him limb from limb, as the lion rends the antelope. But my heart sank within me as with bitter sickness, and I refrained. I saw him on the point of repeating his blow, when, overcome by pain and anguish, I quitted the cottage, and in the general tumult escaped unperceived to my hovel.’”

In the book, monster went to the cottage when the old man was left alone. He walked in as a stranger. He introduced himself to the old man. The old man is kind to him because he is blind, but then the younger people return and drive him away. They were scared by the monster. Finally, they moved from the cottage.

After the family moved, the monster went to find Victor. On the way through the woods, he saves a little girl from drowning, but her male companion assumes the monster is attacking her and shoots him in the shoulder.

However, in the movie, it describes different with the original book. (1:01:47-1:08:54), it designed the monster saved Emily, and the old man and Emily accepted the monster. They had a happier time with living together until Felix saw the monster. I think the bear fight is a good part of the movie.

The monster is created by Victor. He tries to connect with people, but even his own creator abandons him because he is so ugly. He closes to the cottage family because he wants to join them. He wants friends to talk and play. However, they hit him without any reasonable reason. All the monster needs is only love. Why we use the different way treat to him just because he is ugly? I was taught that do not judge people by their external appearance.  Judging someone by external appearance can be deceptive, and also prevent you from getting to know a person reinforce stereotype, superficial and limiting. In the movie, monster saves Emily because his true natural is not kill people. He can play with Emily because he admires companion.