It can be said that it is a humorous novel as well as a tragic novel. Through a person's life experience, the life pain that people's fate can't control in history is covered up, and a wry smile for death is derived. He told us, "What are you living for?"
This is a review about "To Be Alive".
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. It is in this narrative process that all emotions quietly invade the reader's reading. In this way, Living completes the philosophical inquiry of the meaning of life with an incisive expression. After that, for a long time, the mainstream literary criticism in China, which flaunted realism, sharply criticized life. For example, the author thinks that the protagonist Fu Gui's last life is compared to an animal-like life, and he spurns it. However, with the passage of time, the market, especially overseas markets, gave a high evaluation of "living", and other opinions on "living" gradually emerged. For example, living is the ultimate concern for the meaning of life in the bleak prosperity; Fu Gui's fate shows that human beings' pursuit of everything is futile. At the end, the old cow traveling with Fu Gui hinted at another fact that noble people could not accept: in fact, human beings are just a kind of existence, which is as meaningless as everything else. The essence of pursuit and exploration is just a big joke and so on. In fact, the latter may be very big, because Yu Hua's description of cruelty in coldness is his specialty. Just as a skilled surgeon slowly separates the cruel nature of life from the false kindness, living has shattered one illusion after another that people may have a good direction in a very calm and even slow way. In this way, there will be an ending: people will be impressed by this book. Because reading is a psychological fear experience. This actually implies another fact of China literature: realism with realism as its slogan is actually the most afraid to face reality. For example, in essence, life itself has no meaning except living. Then if we must give meaning, then the only thing that can be counted as meaning is probably life itself. The great feeling of "being alive" may come from this. It is precisely because of this that "Living" clarifies a content. Living is a process in general understanding, but living is actually a static state.
Yu Hua wants to tell readers that there is no happiness or misfortune in life. Life is living, living quietly, with a touch of loneliness.