First, use color words to determine the tone and reveal the theme.
The use of color words is first manifested in the writer's true description of natural scenery. They choose colorful colors to make colorful pictures, determine the basic colors of the pictures in their works by describing the colors, and dye the works with appropriate background colors to serve the theme. For example, there is a passage in Ba Jin's Sunrise at Sea: "Sure enough, after a while, half the face of the sun appeared in that place. Red is really red, but there is no light. The sun seems to be working hard step by step, rising to the end, finally breaking through the clouds and jumping out of the sea completely, with a lovely red color. In an instant, this crimson round thing suddenly shone brightly, making people's eyes ache, and the clouds next to it suddenly became dazzling. " Here, red has become the color of the theme, which is consistent with the author's subjective feelings of pursuing and yearning for light. With the help of the description of the morning glow, the author highlights the pursuit of a better life and the praise of nature. Among them, active red has vivid meanings, which makes people feel that a new life is displayed in front of people like an active red sunrise, making the theme of the article suddenly vivid.
Second, with the help of color words, the fate and social reality of characters are expressed.
Color words can not only describe scenery, highlight the characteristics of things, enrich artistic conception, but also depict characters, unify the author's understanding of characters and criticize society, and play a role in deepening the theme.
We can get inspiration from two descriptions in Hometown. There is a passage describing the young man's leap into the earth: "There is a golden full moon hanging in the dark blue sky, and endless green watermelons are planted on the sand by the sea." In the meantime, there was an eleven or twelve-year-old boy with a silver ring around his neck and a steel fork in his hand ... "There was a paragraph describing the old man's leap into the earth:" The purple round face turned gray. Like his father, his eyes are swollen all around, which I know. People who farm by the sea blow the sea breeze all day, which is generally the case. He wore a worn felt hat on his head and only a thin cotton-padded coat on his body. Holding a paper bag and a long pipe in my hand is not the red and round hand I remember, but a thick, stupid and cracked hand like pine bark. " In the description in the last paragraph, the sky is dark blue, the full moon is golden, and the endless watermelon is bright green, with a silver ring around its neck and a steel fork in its hand. Bright colors constitute a magical picture, beautiful and full of youthful vitality. In a gorgeous and soft color, a handsome and lovely teenager lives in front of us. In the second half of the description, the moist face is grayish yellow, and the eyes are red and swollen. The original red hands are like pine bark, which is in sharp contrast with the gorgeous pictures and handsome teenagers before. Through the color with emotional connotation, the work reveals the material and spiritual harm caused by the reactionary social system to farmers, and shows the author's deep concern about farmers' mental numbness. Through different colors, the works show the different living conditions and mental outlook of Runtu. These undoubtedly played a very important role in expressing characters and deepening the theme.
Third, color words imply the psychology of the characters.
Expressing characters' psychology with color words has direct appeal to depicting characters and setting off the atmosphere. Take Su Tong's novels as an example to illustrate. The characters in Su Tong's novels are often psychopathic, distorted and miserable. They live in a cold and desperate space, struggling painfully, and their novel world is always shrouded in gloomy atmosphere. For example, there is a passage in Shu Family Brothers: "Han Meng's blue is very blue. Shu Nong remembers that all the women he peeked at were blue, even if they died. Shu farmers think that women and death are blue. " The blue here is bleak and cold, which symbolizes both the evil of women and the sadness of youth. This color is always consistent with the cold and gloomy living environment of the characters, which makes the fate of the characters even more tragic. Another example is Mao Dun's description of Wu Sunfu's psychology in Midnight: "Wu Sunfu suddenly sneered and shouted loudly, and an iron blue depression and disappointment spread on his purple sauce-colored face." Iron cyan is a cold and horrible color, and it is a turbid and cold color on the face of purple sauce. It fully shows Wu Sunfu's complex psychology at a time when workers are on strike and the world industry is dying. The author makes full use of the emotional power of color to profoundly reveal Wu Sunfu's inner world from the facial expressions of characters.
Fourth, use the change of color to portray characters in depth.
Describing the changes of the same person in different periods with different colors plays an important role in portraying the characters and revealing the changes of their inner thoughts, feelings and destiny. Sister Xianglin in Lu Xun's works is a tragic figure, and the author reflects her half-life experience through several constantly changing portraits. When Sister Xianglin first entered Lu's house, she said, "She wore a white rope on her head, a black skirt, a blue blouse and a moonlight vest. She is about twenty-six or seven years old, and her face is blue and yellow, but her cheeks are still red. " This is the image of an unfortunate young widowed rural woman with red cheeks, which shows that Sister Xianglin's life is very difficult, but she has not lost her youthful vitality and confidence in life. When I went to Lujia for the second time, "my face was black and blue, but the blood on my cheek was gone", which implicitly implied that Sister Xianglin had left a deep wound in her heart after experiencing those sorrows. When she donated the threshold hopefully, her fate did not change. Her face turned "gray-black" and her hair turned gray after half a year. These color changes once again show that Xianglinsao has completely lost her confidence in life and has become a victim of the old feudal patriarchal clan system and ethics. When she became a beggar, on the eve of her death: "the white hair five years ago, that is, it is all white now, unlike people in their forties;" His face is thin, yellow and black, and his previous sad face is gone, as if it were woodcut; Only blinking can show that she is a living thing. "The color of Xianglinsao's portrait changed from bright to dark, the tone became colder and colder, and the atmosphere became more and more gloomy. The tone of this change not only reflects the real change of the fate of the characters, but also deepens the theme of the works.
Fifthly, through color description, a color image is constructed.
Color description, in addition to truthful description, can also penetrate the author's subjective feelings, thoughts and emotions for surreal description, and construct a color image (that is, color image) that permeates and blends subjective factors. For example, there is a passage in Lao She's Camel Xiangzi: "As soon as I got out of the carriage, I immediately felt empty. The trees on the roadside stood sparsely, and there was not even a bird on the branches. Gray trees, gray land and gray houses all stand quietly under the gray-yellow sky. Looking from this gray, I saw the desolate western hills. " According to his own subjective intention, Lao She described the colors of nature in the northern winter, which cast a layer of dead gray like lead on trees, land, houses and blue sky, forming a gray and dignified winter map in the northern part, setting off an empty and desolate loneliness and cold. However, in this gray image carefully constructed by the author, Xiangzi's final sad situation and mood can be seen through.
From the above analysis, we can see that the organic use and collocation of colors play an important role in the expression, image building and theme deepening of the article. Successful color description can not only convey the subjective and rational information of the work vividly, but also reveal rich potential aesthetic information in the process of stimulating readers' color aesthetic feeling. However, the use of color in literary works should be appropriate, moderate, skillful and hierarchical. Only in this way can we embody profound ideological content, express people's specific thoughts, emotions and subjective feelings through bright and changeable colors, and really play a role in setting off the atmosphere, revealing the theme and enriching the characters.
(Author: xinyi city No.3 Middle School)