When you search for "Yu Hua", you will find that the word "absurd" runs through almost all his works. Beneath the veil of absurdity is the writer's reflection on "life and death", his cry for "humanity" and his insistence on "tenderness".
Among Yu Hua's early avant-garde masterpieces, The Mistake by the River is a novella that can't be missed. In this masterpiece, the author's description of "absurd reality" reached a peak. It used the shell of traditional detective novels to explain a bizarre case, and at the same time, it showed the loopholes and powerlessness of legal order, the cowardice and madness of human nature in absurd reality to the fullest by breaking through the ending of traditional detective novels.
"The mistake by the river" is an absurd world.
The novel revolves around the criminal police's investigation of a "serial murder case of a madman". On a quiet early autumn afternoon, the townspeople found a "human head" by the river, which came from a 65-year-old widow, Mo Si's mother-in-law. After a step-by-step investigation by Ma Zhe, the chief criminal police officer, they finally confirmed that the murderer was a madman.
who is the madman? He is the person that fourth mother-in-law takes care of like her own son. Why did the madman kill fourth mother-in-law? At first, the police speculated that it was murder for money, because the rumored "huge sum" saved by the deceased was not found in the deceased, but it seemed far-fetched to become a madman's motive for murder, and later it turned out that it was not the case.
People's views on a madman's murder are at best "the result of mental disorder".
The case seems to be over here, after all, the truth of the case has surfaced. Unusually, the culprit of this murder case is a madman who has lost his normal consciousness, and the law cannot punish him.
does this sound familiar? "Because you are mentally ill, you can be exempted from punishment" and "because you are under 16 years old, you can be exempted from criminal responsibility" ... An abnormal factor can actually be an excuse to escape legal sanctions, and the loopholes in the law have evolved into the armor of "evil" unscrupulous evil.
The loopholes in the law have thus laid a curse for the lunatics behind to continue committing crimes. The same place-the quiet river, the same modus operandi-was cut off from the back of the deceased's neck, the same murder weapon-a firewood knife that everyone can have, and the madman killed a 35-year-old worker and a young child one after another by the river.
As an old man, Mother-in-law Mo Si, a middle-aged worker, and a teenager's child have all become the ghosts of the madman's sword, which actually implies that everyone is in danger in the chaotic and hidden reality. It reveals the inevitability of "security and tranquility" falling in the absurd world.
Look at Ma Zhe, the criminal police chief who is in opposition to the madman. His existence runs through the whole story. In the process of finding the real murderer, he actually gradually discovered the truth of death.
In the face of madness, the law representing "justice and order" is helpless; The doctor who symbolizes "the guarantor of life safety" can't heal him; The town government, which represents the "authoritative authority", is unwilling to actively solve this "trouble" because it is afraid of the consumption of hospitalization expenses. The society can only let "lunatics" disturb the civilized order that people are trying to build.
As a policeman and a just party, Ma Zhe cherishes and protects life safety. He can't watch the madman become a time bomb that continues to endanger life safety and plunge society into chaos, so he chooses to solve this thorny problem in his own way. He pulled the trigger and killed the madman.
that's the problem. Ma Zhe is a normal person, and the law is helpless to the madman, but it is effective to Ma Zhe as a normal person. The law, which should have maintained the just order, has to punish the good people who have done so. More absurdly, it seems that only by making normal people "crazy" can life be saved.
Ma Zhe did "become a madman" in the end. In order to save him, his wife and director called a doctor in a mental hospital in an attempt to "save lives" by fabricating the illusion of his mental disorder. In the end, under the torture of the indifferent doctor's numb "diagnosis", Ma Zhe fell into the trap of becoming a "madman".
In order to ensure the safety of life, normal people get rid of the "madman", but in the end they fall into an endless cycle of becoming "madman"; Justice and hospitals, which maintain life safety and civilized order, have become accomplices in killing people and perverting the law and worsening chaos. How ironic! How cruel! How absurd!
The location of the crime is set by the river. The seemingly quiet and beautiful riverside, but bloody killings have repeatedly occurred, indicating that there is actually an undercurrent under the calm and stable appearance.
The murderer is crazy, but the repeated appearance of dripping clothes in his hands (implying washing away blood) has to make people suspect that he is actually sober. He is the embodiment of violence, blood, ignorance, abnormal condition and anger, and also the externalization of people's madness.
There are also dead people of different ages and identities, all suspects who are afraid of conviction, and ordinary townspeople who later heard of "madness", all of which show that the existence of "madman" is a serious threat to social security.
In this way, the author constructs an absurd world by the river, but it actually reflects a more absurd reality.
The absurd reality is a portrayal of people's madness.
The theme of the novel can be expounded so profoundly, thanks to the author's deliberate use of the means of "narrative blank" in the process of building the story, that is, not detailing how the murderer committed the crime cruelly, nor how the police solved the case brilliantly, but focusing on Mo Si's mother-in-law, children, Wang Hong, Xu Liang, young women and Xu Liang's "fish friends".
What impressed me most about Mo Si's description was the scene when she told her neighbors that she had been bitten off by a madman and beaten:
"When he hit me, he was exactly like my dead husband. It was really cruel." At that time, her face was filled with happiness.
Her husband died at the age of 18, and she has been a widow for 48 years in an old postal office without friends. I don't talk to people on weekdays, and my inner loneliness is nowhere to express. It can be said that the appearance of the madman made her feel some long-lost warmth, which seemed to be a kind of compensation for her "no husband and no children". In order to seize this little warmth, she endured the cruel and absurd torture of a madman, and lingered in this absurd town with a "Stockholm"-style morbid psychology, but eventually died of that weak and illusory warmth.
The child is one of the people who found the "head". In the whole process of solving the case, his "curiosity, innocence and fearlessness" is in sharp contrast with the "fear and avoidance" of adults. Like Ma Zhe, he symbolizes "the exploration of truth", so his death implies that in the absurd world, innocence and truth-seeking will eventually be destroyed by chaos.
Wang Hong, a young man, a young woman who lost her hairpin, and Xu Liang's "fish friend" (the person who discovered Xu Liang's first suicide and reported it to the police) were all people who had appeared at the scene of the deceased, and of course they were all suspects.
In the face of inquiry, the woman's reply was upside down for fear of being convicted; Men have been shouting "I am not afraid of being suspected", which is actually a sign of great fear of being suspected; Xu Liang's "fish friend" doesn't care about Xu Liang himself or his suicide. No matter men or women, they only ignore the truth, ignore the lost life, avoid troubles and worry about their own safety.
Xu Liang only went to the river when his mother-in-law was killed, but he had mental problems and imagined that he had been to the river three times to see the dead. He always felt guilty and couldn't escape the guilt, so he died in his room after his second suicide. What he alludes to is the situation that people are worse off than dead under the torture of reality absurdity.
It is the reaction of these "bystanders", together with the inaction of the "defenders" of justice, hospitals and government, that reveals the core of absurd reality-the madness of people's hearts.
Starting from inner cultivation
Looking for an exit to break through absurd reality
Since we have found the core to form absurd reality and seen the suffering it brings to fragile lives, we must find an exit to save those who are deeply trapped in the abyss of suffering.
The novel is to a great extent the author's strong accusation against the social authority, so the authorities who guide the social development must be introspective and spare no effort to make improvements, which is the responsibility of the "external environment" for social construction. But the root cause is that we, especially every ordinary individual, should set out from ourselves, cultivate our own hearts, and stand out in the iron prison of absurd reality.
Only by cultivating one's inner strength can one have enough courage and strength to resist external attacks from negative forces such as violence, blood, injustice, plunder, anger and fraud; Only by cultivating your inner integrity can you have enough confidence and capital to find the right direction in the chaos and not lose yourself because of illusory temptation; Only by cultivating your heart gently can you tolerate all kinds of injuries in life calmly enough, let it water the kind humanity and thrive, so that warm light can illuminate more dark corners.
Just like the 35-year-old deceased whose wife was just pregnant, all the furnishings in his home made people feel as fresh as sunshine.
"We are thirty years old. I don't think it is necessary to decorate the room like this, but he must." (The deceased's wife said)
The sunshine-like fresh decoration reflects the deceased's expectation and joy for life and new life, and he insists on expressing his cherish and respect for life in a ritual way. I don't know whether his warm mood like sunshine can affect his wife and future children, but I hope so.
then how can we cultivate our hearts? From my limited superficial knowledge, we must first maintain a deep awe of humanity, truth, death, life, freedom and so on. Always in awe, you will not be arrogant; Without arrogance, it is difficult for people to be mad.
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