Some kind of unconsciousness caused by residual snow began to rain heavily last Thursday. By this morning, the rain suddenly stopped. "This is the beginning of the novel. What day is it today? No, so, how many days has it rained? There's no way to know. Only a specific time is set, and there is no corresponding time. Can Xue's indifference to stories brings readers from the relative world of things into the world of things themselves. After reading a few lines, you can know that the narrator here is not the reassuring and meticulous commentator. Can Xue's narrator cannot explain the relationship between things. She just shows things themselves, just like a dream. In this dreamlike world, what can be found can only be found by yourself. If you listen attentively, you may hear it, if you look attentively, you may see it, and then you will understand the meaning of something itself. Because everything in the world created by Can Xue has its own meaning.
As soon as the sun rises, it stinks the mud all over the yard after the rain. Amei, the commentator, uprooted earthworms in that yard for "one morning". What's going on here? I can't finish shoveling all morning. It is "fat and long, pink and tender." Does the earthworm that always crawls home symbolize something? And the neighbor who drills a big hole in the high wall of the yard every day, the child who is possessed by old firecrackers, and the big dog ... they have nothing to do with each other. But if you stand in Amei's position and listen carefully, you will know what they mean to Amei.
The fat and long earthworms, the wind blowing in from the smashed hole, firecrackers, the hot air and stench in the yard are all doing one thing clearly: attacking Ah Mui, all from the outside. Amei has been shoveling countless earthworms all morning, which is a symbolic action to defend against everything that is coming. She is afraid of these things coming in, and Ah Mui, who lives inside the high wall, is also afraid of things from outside entering her and her territory.
We are no strangers to people who live in a hot and humid house like their mother's womb, desperately shut themselves up and refuse everything from outside. Yes, this is ourselves. Ah Mui shovels and shovels forever, trying to shovel away the living things outside. Isn't that what we do repeatedly every day in the invisible spiritual world? Don't we like homes surrounded by high walls best? No matter how sultry and smelly it is, we should defend our accustomed small world like a-mei.
Ah mui's loneliness
The second paragraph is about what Ah Mui recalled in the yard, which was eight years ago. Only a mother and daughter live together in the house, and a man comes. This is a great event for my daughter. For the first time in her life, Amei found out that her mother would fall in love with someone other than herself. The polite name "Lao Li" shows Ah Mui's alienation and distance from him.
What Amei cares about most is her mother. She noticed that someone had entered the kitchen. The kitchen symbolizes mother, our favorite one-way care and protection forever, and unpaid maternal love. Ah Mui found that the mother actually let others in and even forgot to cook in a place that should only belong to the children themselves! Forgetting to cook, of course, is a major event of mother's "dereliction of duty". The mother image of "always wearing a black apron all year round and her eyes always swollen like a garlic bag" reflects A-mei's anxiety, anger, disappointment, jealousy and hatred, which is extremely ominous and ugly.
One day ah mui went to the kitchen to get "one thing". What is this? Of course, I want to get my mother's care and love. She wants to remind her of ah mui. Of course, my mother noticed her and said, "This man has never been so arrogant." This is true. Amei, who is still inseparable from her mother when she grows up, has always been addicted to the closed mother-daughter world, and has no interest in outsiders at all, even without saying hello. Later, my mother simply bolted the door to prevent Ah Mui from coming in, and she and Lao Li were "laughing and making a scene" inside. Obviously, my mother is showing off to A-mei how close she and Lao Li are. What does it mean to be drunk? Mom is really showing off two things: first, she doesn't want to be a good mother to an adult child; Another point is how happy it is for an adult to communicate and socialize with others from the outside!
In this way, ah mui was completely lonely. In July, something happened. We have met another July with no corresponding period, and July without comparison means absolute heat. This is the heat inside and outside Amei's body, and it is also the heat of life itself that she felt for the first time. Because the weather is too hot, Amei feels thirsty. In order to understand the intense thirst, she went to the kitchen to scoop water. However, it was not mom but Lao Li who appeared in the kitchen this time.
Lao Li unexpectedly came in to propose to her. His gray face and convulsive body show his extreme nervousness, and the rickety stool is also a metaphor for Lao Li's mood. The reason why Lao Li proposed marriage is very strange. What A-mei understands is that because A-mei's mother has a house, if she marries her, she can live in this house, and there is no need to find another house.
Ah Mui was neither angry nor happy about this ridiculous proposal, but just laughed loudly. Her attitude not only makes Lao Li angry, but also makes readers angry. Even though Lao Li's reason was absurd and was instigated by Ah Mui's mother, after all, he confessed directly in front of Ah Mui, but Ah Mui neither agreed nor refused, and even explained that his reason for laughing was: "I was going to write a letter, but I ended up listening to you here for so long." She is going to write a letter, so it should be said that she is not completely uninterested in outsiders. She began to dream about people who didn't exist far away outside. However, people who exist well here now can't.
Ah mui is a mirror image of ourselves.
In the third paragraph of the novel, Ah Mui actually married Lao Li. That's weird! She certainly didn't overcome all difficulties and finally got together happily with the person she loved, but she didn't cry and marry the other person decided by her feudal parents helplessly. What puzzles readers is that Ah Mui's marriage does not conform to the love story. She is neither voluntary nor forced. You know that people proposed because your mother has a house, and you have no feelings for him, and others have not forced you, so why on earth did you get married? Did the narrator intentionally omit part of the story?
After much deliberation, we finally come to an absurd conclusion that we are most unwilling to accept: Ah Mei got married for no reason, and she doesn't even know why she got married. Maybe it can be said that ah mui let nature take its course. Her mother wanted her to get married, and Lao Li wanted to marry her, so she got married. Ah Mui's own will and will are completely lacking here.
Is this kind of marriage really strange? Not surprising. Not only that, this kind of obedience without our own will is our most accustomed way of doing things. Like why do you want to go to college? Is it because my mother said that universities should study hard, the teacher said that universities should study hard, and the world around you and not around you seems to say that universities should study hard? How terrible and difficult it is for a person to live according to his clear wishes, values and ideals! It is better to continue to be a mother's good boy, be a slave to the world, and live other people's lives according to their wishes. How easy this life is, what we fear most is complete freedom.
It can be said that Can Xue's A-mei, like Lu Xun's A-Q, is a mirror image of ourselves. Yes, Ah Mui's marriage is really not strange, nor is it a mysterious mystery deliberately fabricated by Can Xue. If there is a secret, we are the real mystery. Because we can never see, hear or understand what we are.
Ah Mui's longing for the outside world.
The fourth paragraph, the day after marriage, Lao Li built an attic in the corner and hung up the bed curtain. The attic shows Lao Li's position at home, and the dirty curtains show the gap between him and A-mei. It also shows that he is dirty and afraid of the opposite sex. Lao Li said from this account that he was "always afraid" of sleeping with Ah Mei and asked her "What do you think?" . Ah Mui just "mumbled twice, which is an answer", as if she didn't feel any desire or thoughts. Lao Li lived here for three months and then moved back to his hometown. Because he is afraid of Amei, Amei has no feelings for him. She is just busy writing letters to people who don't know far away, and both of them do whatever they want. His mother called him a "freeloader" and a "monkey player". This is also a fact. Lao Li failed to let his daughter grow up against her mother's expectations, and he still has no desire of his own. He is also a monkey who acts according to other people's intentions.
We spent a short time together, but a son was born between Lao Li and A-mei. When Ah Mui became a mother, Lao Li immediately began to visit. I probably want to see my son, but I also want to see Amei as a mother. "Lao Li got into the kitchen as soon as he came," but the kitchen was still his mother. "Every once in a while, my mother runs out in a panic and peeks into Ah Mei's room through the crack of the door", but Ah Mei doesn't seem to be going out of her small house at all, but "pretends not to see" her mother. I have no choice but to show her how to be a mother herself. She "picked up the big dog and rushed into the kitchen", "prepared some good dishes" for him every time, and patiently raised the big dog. But ah mui was still not awakened and did not imitate her mother. On the contrary, she was "amused by their mysterious attitude". After performing for five years in a row, my mother finally gave up and Lao Li never came again. Mom also went out of the kitchen and moved to a pile house near the kitchen, where all the unused things were put. Mother declared that she would never take care of ah mui again. For Amei, her mother is like something she doesn't want, which can be put in a pile house. There is also the problem of garlic. This novel is full of garlic. Mom used to like garlic very much, and her mouth always smelled of garlic. Later, in the kitchen, she ate with Lao Li and the big dog, and exaggerated the dog's eating. Only Ah Mui thinks eating garlic is a "bad habit". In fact, garlic is very tonic, and it can have desire and vitality after eating. So ah mui is afraid of garlic, does it mean that she is afraid of desire? My son, the big dog, can eat garlic and live without fear. "Maybe he can be a general in the future." On the other hand, is Ah Mei, who is afraid of eating garlic, a lifeless walking corpse? The big dog also learned that his father looked down on her, always called her "hello" and never called her "mom".
The hero of the novel is called "A-mei", but this name didn't come out once in the whole article except the title, and no one called her A-mei. She seems to be a person without a name. Yes, I have neither my own desire, will, plan nor my own life. What name do I need? She just walked around aimlessly in her small yard like a shadow. Lao Li is not coming. In the past two or three years, A-mei's yearning for the outside world has become stronger and stronger. The image of Lao Li, who used to be miserable, has now become a "lean and beautiful little man" in Ah Mui's imagination. The most interesting thing is that even Ah Mui praised Lao Li's departure. She said, "It is wise for him to leave us!" This is a new change for Amei.
Ah Mui's Sorrow
At the end of the last paragraph, let's review it first. At the beginning of the novel, Ah Mui is shoveling earthworms into the house in a sultry yard on a sunny day, while recalling all kinds of things that have happened in the past eight years. At noon, she began to recall that it was already evening. "The sun is going down behind the pile house, and my mother is coughing in the pile house again." A-mei went on to say, "She coughed like this for more than two months, probably thinking that she would not live long, so she bolted the door tightly so as not to let me disturb her." When I read this paragraph for the first time, I don't know if readers have ever thought about it. My mother is going to die. Why should I bolt the door tightly and keep my daughter out? Mother won't let the child near because the child is dying. The last task of a mother is not to cry and hold her child in her arms and immerse herself in endless flesh-and-blood love, but to make a clean break with her child who has always wanted to rely on herself and let her go out alone. In order for the child to really live, the mother must leave this world.
Now we can answer some questions that make readers think about this novel. What exactly is Ah Mui's "melancholy" in The Melancholy of Ah Mui in Sunny Days? The answer is written in the last two lines. Her sadness is: "If it is windy tonight, the fence will fall down and smash our house." If the house is smashed, the mother will die, the mother will die and the child will die. Without dependence and protection, you have to face the world alone and stand alone. This is Ah Mui's melancholy. How terrible it is for a person to stand up in the face of this vast and boundless world without the identity of a child and a slave! How terrible it is to really live the life you want!
But, you see, time is coming. The sun made the yard steaming, fat and long, and pink earthworms, which symbolize genitals and life, kept drilling on Ah Mei. Her heart is full of life, full of longing for the outside world, full of desire to start a new life. Yes, ah mui really wants to be independent. Because her desire for independence is real, she is still hesitating. Because once you are independent and start to pursue true freedom, you will never get back to your warm and humid mother. However, if you really want to live, you must die first.
I searched many websites and couldn't find the original text. But there is an anthology of Can Xue's novels on Sina Reading Channel.
I'll go to the library to help you borrow books in the afternoon and return them at night.