John williams once said to the graduate students who studied writing: "Writers can't teach, you have to find the tricks of writing yourself." Then I piled up a pile of books one person high, so that the students could study hard. The list of books includes daisy miller by Henry James, A Portrait of a Lady, A Happy House in Edith Wharton and The Age of Innocence. It goes without saying that he was deeply influenced by classical literature and inherited their excellent qualities, and all his works were extraordinary.
Epic, novel, drama, poetry and other outstanding works through the ages have different forms of expression and different themes. There are some towering trees-The Divine Comedy, Iliad and Paradise Lost, which not only overshadowed countless literary works of later generations, but also profoundly influenced human's grand cognition of the universe and history. There are also young trees in the forest-the adventures of Dorian Gray written by Huckleberry Finn. The butcher's cross belongs to the second kind and has the characteristics of "clear bones and lush foliage". Structure, rhythm, language, theme, characterization-you can hardly find anything wrong with john williams's novels.
The skeleton of The Butcher's Cross is simple and clear: "What will happen to a young man from Harvard who is full of Emerson and sees the real nature in the west?" This is the starting point of this novel (that is, the butcher's cross). "said the author. With the help of Hunter Miller, Skinner Snyder and Charlie Hogg, Andrews, a Harvard student, finally went into the wilderness as he wished. They set off from Butcher's Cross Station and went west across the grassland to hunt bison in the Colorado Mountains, but the mountain was closed by heavy snow. The next spring, they returned home with a full load, but all the cowhide was washed away by the flood on the way, and they also lost their companion Schneider. This is just a new and novel structure, which is both stable and load-bearing, and it is very "skinny".
Mr. Zhu Guangqian said: "First-class novelists are not all people who can tell stories. The stories in first-class novels are mostly like flower stands made of dead trees, which are only used to support a flowery and vibrant kudzu garden. Beyond these stories are poems in novels. Reading a novel, only seeing the story without seeing its poem is like seeing a flower stand and forgetting the flowers on it. " Then, the next thing to do is to constantly add details and themes to the work, so as to please the readers' senses and express the author's intention to write this book. This is the plump "sensuality" of the work.
When it comes to details, Williams' scene description is full of images: "They camped by a Koizumi. In the sunset, the spring is bright. The trickle flows through the smooth stone and into a small pool at the foot of the mountain. The pool overflowed and became a narrow stream, hidden in the dense grass in the valley. " Such beautiful words are scattered throughout the book. You can recall Tolstoy's series of works in the Caucasus Mountains, and you can also recall the cold lyricism between light and shadow in Ang Lee's movies: at the wedding reception, parents came to the United States to find Wei Tong, and in the afternoon in the backyard, light and shadow gently staggered and shone on them, which was quiet and warm; In Brokeback Mountain, Ennis watched Jack riding on a distant hillside, where the sun was shining. The film didn't tell the audience what this meant, so let me show you the picture. There is no turning point in the narrative, and many details implicitly express a feeling, but they are full of lyricism.
Of course, the director or author's careful arrangement of these details is not without purpose, nor is it just to please the senses of the audience and readers. Some people may ask, does it imply something? There must be something implied, and the whole story symbolizes something. It all depends on what you read. The skeleton and details of the novel, "a flower stand made of dead trees" and "a garden full of splendid kudzu flowers" all follow the theme of the creator and are all aimed at realizing the intention of creating this work. Some people just regard The Butcher's Cross as a western novel full of failures, but I think it is an allegorical poem with rich symbolic significance. She really deserves to be interpreted so deeply.
Thomas Foster has an amazing saying in How to Read a Literature Book (translated by Taiwan Province as "27 Lessons for Teaching You to Read Literature"): "Every journey is a pursuit (of course, there are exceptions)."
Hide the details and reproduce the skeleton of the novel, and you will find that the theme and essence of many literary works are the same: a young knight embarks on a dangerous journey and goes through difficulties and obstacles to pursue the legendary "holy grail", and finally finds that there is no "holy grail" in the world. Let's put it another way: the fledgling Hobbit embarked on the difficult road of escorting the Lord of the Rings, fighting with the Ring and the self-demon, and finally sending the Ring to the lava of the Magic Capital for destruction. Let's put it another way: a Harvard student stepped into a strange wilderness, crossed the difficulties and obstacles such as scorching sun, hunger and thirst, snowstorm, and went to the Colorado mountains to hunt bison, and finally returned with a full load. Unfortunately, the car full of wild cowhide was washed away by the river. This is what Thomas Foster called "the pursuit of novels".
Why are the reasons for going to the destination divided into "claim" and "truth"? Because Andrews doesn't know what he really wants. Of course, hunting bison in the Colorado mountains is the most straightforward and superficial thing in the book. Further up, Andrews yearns for the wilderness and wants to get in touch with the legendary western nature. "What does he want to say to Mr. McDonald? It was a feeling, an impulse to say. But no matter what he said, he knew it was just synonymous with the wilderness he was struggling to pursue. " If so, then john williams is not john williams. Andrews is looking for himself.
The author tells us step by step that this is a history of youth growth, the protagonist is experiencing challenges and tests, and all his sufferings and understanding are symbolic. The whole novel is about the growth, transformation, suffering, baptism and rebirth of Andrews, and he is constantly writing about the rest of his life. Before leaving, the woman francine said to him, "I like your tenderness. While you are still soft ... Yes, you will come back, but you will be completely different. You will no longer be young, you will be like everyone else. The wind and the sun make your face rough and your hands no longer soft. " Because of riding for a long time, my hands and buttocks blister, cocoon and molt, and then I feel numb and no longer feel pain; Peeling wild cowhide for the first time, drowning in the intestines full of cattle, getting covered in blood, and then jumping into the river to wash the whole body; When the snowstorm came, in order to survive, he hid in a protective shell made of wild cowhide, was buried under the snow layer all over the mountain for several days and nights, and finally broke through the snow. From the symbolic point of view, he experienced the baptism of blood, water and snow, washed away the young cocoon, and "reborn" from the silkworm chrysalis, and finally realized himself. This is the whole process of "phoenix nirvana". Like stoner, this is a fable about self-realization.
Self-realization is a process of constantly searching for and determining one's existence in nature or the universe. Only when we stand firm can we understand the outside world. How do humans find their own existence? You must look at yourself through external things. So people can know the beauty and ugliness of their appearance by looking in the mirror; Believers know the insignificance of human beings through religious beliefs; Young people choose to travel far and see the outside world. So, what did our Andrews understand after realizing his self-awareness?
After 20 centuries of human changes, the ancient Greek tragedy King Oedipus is still enduring, which always arouses readers' strong sense of singing. On the contrary, the political satire in aristophanes's comedies can't be understood without comments. Even if the content of the annotation is barely understood, it is far from the ideas conveyed by the playwright. Among China folk tales, the most popular ones are the same tragic stories as Cowherd and Weaver Girl, Legend of White Snake, Meng Jiangnu's Crying at the Great Wall and Liang Zhu. So, why is tragedy always longer than comedy? Because the content of tragedy discussion is often the most essential situation of human existence: the irresistible sense of powerlessness in the depths of human soul in the face of fate.
Oedipus has a strong sense of fatalism. No matter how hard the protagonist Oedipus tries, he can't avoid the ending of "killing his father and marrying his mother". Similarly, since Andrews began to plan his trip to the West, readers have been waiting for his failure. There are many ways to fail, and the author chose to let it be happy and then live in vain. This is "the oldest hostility of the universe or fate to mankind."
Conceited human beings are eager to try and change something. The universe always stands quietly in front of small human beings, happily destroying all your "prospects", but it just doesn't meet your wishes. There is a very intriguing scene in the article: when the hunter Miller insisted on killing the last herd of bison in the valley, they launched an attack, and then a snowstorm suddenly came and buried the valley at will. This reminds people of the writing of poetry: poets are used to juxtaposing things, things and truth in the same column to achieve the same or even enhanced effect. When human beings fantasize that they can dominate the life and death of other people's world, the creator pushes them all to the brink of death with one hand. Someone in the original text asked Andrews, "Look at Miller. He knows this land like the back of his hand and firmly believes that all his ideas are correct. What's the use? " Charlie Hogg has his Bible and whiskey. Can those things make your winter easier? Or saved your cowhide? Schneider is his name? Not even his name. When he dies, his name cannot be taken away. "
In other words, the creator did not realize the existence of human beings at all, let you exist, and unconsciously ignored you. However, human beings have regarded the earth as the center of the universe since ancient times, and naturally deny such cruel ancient lessons. Young Andrews is no exception ... seeing the once proud, noble and dignified bison suddenly turned into a pile of stiff dead meat at the mercy of others. After the original image of bison was deprived, or his imaginary image of bison was deprived, it swayed strangely and derisively in front of him. He got a fright, got sick and ran away. "From the fate of bison being arbitrarily mutilated and all kinds of experiences since then, he thought of his irresistible powerlessness and lingered in the bed of francine, a woman.
"The most painful thing in life is that there is no way to go after waking up. Happy are dreamers; If you can't see the way to go, the most important thing is not to wake him. " If Andrews has not set foot on the journey of pursuing himself, and is still an ignorant teenager living in an urban illusion, then he can hide in the ruins of human civilization and build a movie dream, a music dream and an academic dream. But he woke up and resolutely chose to burst the illusion of survival and face the helplessness of people in the world.
So he resolutely returned to the wilderness of violence and embraced the real existence of nature. He left the world a growth fable poem about self-realization and understanding the fate of the universe.