"Oriental" is one of the winning works of the first Mao Dun Literature Award, before talking about this book, we must briefly introduce the Mao Dun Literature Award. The Mao Dun Literature Award was set up in 1981 and is selected every four years, and long stories with more than 130,000 words can participate in the selection. The first Mao Dun Literary Award was selected in 1982, and the selection scope was the works released from 1977 to 1981.
Knowing the historical background of the work helps to understand the main tone of the work, and it is easy to have the illusion of not being credible regardless of the time of writing. "The East" is a huge work of nearly 800,000 words, and it took a long time to write, starting as early as 1959 and lasting more than ten years. The storyline of this book is relatively simple, and the two story lines revolve around the protagonist Guo Xiang. One line is written with Guo Xiang into the Korean War, and it is written about the story on the battlefield; The other line is the struggle against the landlord class around Guo Xiang's hometown, and the process of rural cooperativeization.
The character of the protagonist Guo Xiang is very distinct, just like a piece of simple gold, thinking wholeheartedly about dedicating himself to the people and the country, and has no selfishness at all. On the battlefield, he has always been on the front line, whether it was a company commander or a battalion commander. The final scene is where his leg is blown off, and he is still sitting on a stretcher directing the war. To modern people, this kind of glorified character is too artistic and unreal. But look at Lei Feng at that time, as well as Xiao Changchun in "Sunny Day", in essence, spirit and Guo Xiang are the same kind of people, whether they are people in reality or characters in literary works, they all have very distinctive life values of the times.
When I first came into contact with these characters, I also measured them according to my current thinking, and I felt that these people were unrealistic. After reading a lot, and after understanding the growth history of these people, I found that these people's thoughts are natural, and we now think differently, also because of the different growth process. Look at Guo Xiang's growth, he was bullied by the landlords from the old society, he didn't have enough food and clothing, and lived a life that was not as good as pigs and dogs, and he ran out to participate in the revolution at the age of thirteen. The original intention of participating in the revolution was also simple, in order to have something to eat, there was a chance to seek revenge on the landlord who bullied their family. With the influence of the people around him, he also experienced various wars and saw the suffering of others, and this hatred of individual landlords rose to hatred of the entire landlord class. When he arrived in North Korea and saw the miserable life of the local people, this hatred rose to hatred of the exploiting class as a whole.
The formation of this kind of life values is a combination of factors such as the background of the times and personal experience. Guo Xiang, Lei Feng, Xiao Changchun, etc., all have the same growth experience, and eventually form the same life values, which is not surprising. Now many people will sigh that people have no values now, or they are all money worship values. I think it's just that times have changed, and the growth of the individual has evolved from the overall values to the development of individuality, and the universal values of life are not disappearing, but hidden, and when something major happens, these values will emerge again. Just like the people's soldiers and doctors who are charging on the front line in the face of every major disaster, as well as the motorcycles driving against the wind at the scene of the 2022 Chongqing wildfire, these people are the heroes of the new generation, and when they are needed, the values engraved in their bones will be expressed.
This book not only tells the formation process of Guo Xiang's life values from the front, but also tells the degeneration of the battalion commander Lu Xirong from the negative side, how he finally lost the revolutionary struggle in the joy of victory from a staunch revolutionary soldier, and the author finally gave him a good home, so that he could use his nature to do business, and he might do something in the world. There is also from the transformation of capturing American prisoners, how to seek the wisdom of the East from the false Western culture, especially the experience of blacks, to be respected in China, from this aspect, the Chinese have never discriminated against foreigners, but also because the Chinese are originally a multi-ethnic integration of the country.
Reading old works in the new era, we are not just an audience, although the times are changing, the experience is changing, but the essence of the person in the heart is still the same, and we can be moved by the spirit of the protagonist, which is the charm of a good book.
Classics are classics