Wang Meng's novel Activity Becomes Man, written in 1985, is the most important novel published in 1980s. This novel is very interesting. It is largely written by the author based on his personal experience, which provides a very interesting example for individuals to deal with their own history and childhood memories. Through this work, he reflected on the history of China and the fate of China people and even China intellectuals in China society. Through the memories of his family, he kept thinking about many different meanings contained in the history of China and China.

"Activities become people" is an important image hanging in the book. The protagonist Ni Wu is like an "active human being", with a clever head and a pair of unhealthy legs under his tall body. Through such a metaphor, the novel discovers the internal division of modern intellectuals in China.

Zhao is the narrator in the novel, that is, an observation angle. The basic requirement of a novel is fiction, and the simplest definition of a novel is making up stories. The fiction of this novel is related to the author's experience. The story seems to be fiction, but it is actually the author's re-imagination of his own life, that is, taking his memory as an imagination and fiction. It is through this child named Ni Zao that this novel sees the world. We can't say that this is the author's autobiography, but we can really read Wang Meng's feelings about his life from this novel, so it is a novel with autobiographical factors. He tells the story of himself and his father in his works, and the hero of the novel is actually his father, Ni Wucheng. This father actually runs through the contemporary history of China.

In fact, the whole story of "activities become people" is constantly showing some key points in the process of Ni Wucheng's family from stability to disintegration and then to disintegration. Why is the novel called Activity Becomes Man? Because it is mentioned in the novel that Ni Zao's father, Ni Wucheng, bought him a Japanese picture book entitled "Activities Become People". There is a passage in the novel about this scene. This image is a very important core part of this book.

A book "Activity Becomes Man" helps Ni Zao realize that man is made up of colorful jade parts. Do you wear a hat or a headscarf or something? If you wear clothes, the third is to wear pants or skirts, boots or shoes or clogs. These three parts are variable in activity. Just like a girl in a hat, she can be fat in a suit, thin in a kimono and sideways in a leather jacket. Why is your body sideways? This is also easy to explain. Apparently, she turned to look at it? Uh ... Then the legs, you can wear bloomers, you can wear the lower half of the robe; It can be a half-trouser leg with legs and feet exposed, or it can be wearing sandals. In this way, the same avatar can become many. The same body can also have a variety of heads and legs. This is how ever-changing people happen. It's just that some three things are in harmony, some are a little stiff and out of shape, and some silkworm three things are put together-it makes people feel ridiculous or disgusting, even terrible. Well, if only everyone could change for themselves. However, this variety still makes people happy. He and his sister choose their favorite combination and say they like it from time to time. After a while, I said I liked that one and finally saw it.

"Activities become people" is an important image hanging in the book. It can be said to be a symbol or a metaphor. It may be such an image chosen by the author at random, but it has little to do with the rest of the book. Only these two fragments in the book describe the inner feelings of Ni Zao, who was born in childhood. This just unified the book and became the core image of the book. In fact, the book tells a story: Ni Wucheng, an intellectual who returned from overseas, worked as a lecturer in two universities in the early 1940s. The book describes two kinds of people, one is an intellectual and the other is a citizen. Ni Zao's mother Jing Yi is a typical citizen. His family is also a standard family of four. Jingyi and Ni Wucheng have two children-Ni Zao and Ni Ping. There are two people in this family-one is grandma Zhao Jiang, the mother-in-law of Ni Wucheng; One is Zhao Jiang's eldest daughter named Jing Zhen. Jing Yi, Zhao Jiang's family and Jing Zhen formed a small group, which is a typical family of citizens who moved to Beijing from rural Tianjin. The two kinds of people involved in the book-intellectual Ni Wucheng, modern China citizen Jing Yi, Jiang He Jing Zhen-are all embodied in one family. The family lives in a unique quadrangle. The basic pattern is: Ni Wucheng's family of four lives together, and Jiang and Jing Zhen live together. This story is about a family's life experience in the early 1940s, and also about a 9-year-old child, Ni Zao's views and memories of life when he was growing up. The interesting thing about the novel is that we see China intellectuals or intellectuals from here. At that time, Beijing was also called Beiping, which was in the period of Japanese occupation, and China's national sovereignty was not as good as there. Another interesting thing about this story is that it constantly shows some key points in the process of a family from stability to disintegration. The story is simple. What you see is the process of a family from relative stability to complete disintegration. Ni Wucheng ran away from home, marking the collapse of this family, and this family has never been combined again. What kind of intellectual is Ni Wucheng? He knows everything and is fascinated by China's enlightenment thought since the May 4th Movement. He is keen on hygiene and changing his daily life. He is very strongly opposed to feudalism. This has something to do with his background. He was born in a small place called Mengguantun near Tianjin:

It is close to the Bohai Sea, and there are saline-alkali land everywhere, and locusts often plague people, which makes people miserable. Speaking of hometown, Ni Wuzhuang remembered an excellent folk song he learned when he was a child: sheep and eggs,/rubbing his feet,/You are my brother (thinking about geese). /I am your brother. /make a pot of wine and we'll drink it together. /Drunk,/Hit his wife. /Shoot my wife,/How? /rich,/say another one. /people who have no money,/carrying drums and singing yangko. "

This ballad reflects a traditional society of extreme poverty and deprivation. Ni Wucheng's family is very bad. He comes from a landlord family. There are also painful memories in his family: his father was an eccentric man who smoked a lot and cured himself. There is such a detail in the book:

Opium bound Niweide's heart and protected Niweide from evil worship. He is obedient to Nuo Nuo, happy-go-lucky, timid, as long as he smokes a big pipe. It is said that once he occasionally came in high spirits and wanted to kill a chicken to eat meat. With the protection and encouragement of the servants, we grabbed the chicken, broke its wings and neck, and put a sharp knife that had been sharpened quickly on the hot chicken neck. Just pull the handle gently and he can finish his first massacre. I don't know if it is because he is soft-hearted or because he is addicted to opium. He fell short, threw the knife on the ground, let the chicken go, and went back to the house to lie on the kang and twist the smoke cream.

From now on, we can find that he has no ability to act. Ni Wucheng is a posthumous child. This is also symbolic-Ni Wucheng is a posthumous child of an old traditional feudal society. Ni Wucheng's mother found that he was very radical when he was a child. In modern China, many intellectuals came from landlord families and rebelled in their own homes. Just look at the biographies of Guo Moruo and others. Ni Wucheng's experience is similar to theirs. The book says:

From then on, Ni Wuzhuang's mother was frightened. Her trusted servant kept reporting worrying news about Ni Wucheng. Ni Wucheng talks with tenants. He said that the land should be given to farmers. Land to the tiller is the teaching of Sun Yat-sen, the "father of the country", and it is parasitic for landlords to eat land rent. "Brother Zi is talking nonsense!" Small report to mother.

These statements are all modern consciousness. Ni Wucheng's mother is the wife of a landlord in a traditional society, and basically regards modern consciousness as "nonsense", which is basically two kinds of words. There is also: "The mother also found that her son often suffered from insomnia. At an early age, sometimes I tossed and turned in bed in the middle of the night. Ask him why he doesn't sleep, saying that he can't figure out the purpose, meaning and value of life. When Ni Wucheng was fourteen years old, on New Year's Eve, everyone in the Ni family was offering sacrifices to their ancestors and kowtowing to their ancestral tablets, but Ni Wucheng could not be found halfway. After searching for a long time, Ni Wucheng ran to the pear garden to observe the stars. His mother told him to go back, and he criticized those superstitious activities as pure self-deception, and sooner or later he would smash these ancestral tablets. "

Ni Wucheng 13 years old began to think about problems and began to transcend tradition with modernity. -traditional society is to worship ancestors, and exploring nature is a symbol of modernity. You can find that Ni Wucheng has all the basic qualities of modern intellectuals. Mother told him to go back, and he criticized those superstitious activities as self-deception. Sooner or later, he will smash these ancestral tablets. This is consistent with the May 4th intellectuals. The madman in Lu Xun's Diary of a Madman discovered the truth of "cannibalism" under benevolence and morality. But later, his mother gave him opium to kill his fighting spirit. /kloc-When he was 0/6 years old, he suffered from severe diarrhea due to opium smoking. After lying in the hospital bed for a month, he found himself taller and became a bowlegged. Since then, his tall body and handsome face have been as thin as his hemp pole, and his bent legs are not harmonious. He is like a "humanoid", with a clever head and a pair of unhealthy legs under his tall body. Here, you can initially feel this image, and feel that it conforms to "activities become people". Through this metaphor, the novel discovers the internal division of modern intellectuals in China.