Mo Yan believes that you can write about war without having experienced it. But his idea has been questioned by some writers. In order to prove that his idea is feasible, he is determined to create a novel related to anti-Japanese.
The novella Red Sorghum is produced under this opportunity.
Marquez is a famous writer in Latin America. Representative works include One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in Cholera Period. It is mentioned in many literary materials that Mo Yan's Red Sorghum Family was influenced by the magical realism of Marquez's works.
According to Mo Yan, the first work Red Sorghum of Red Sorghum Family was completed in 1984, and his first contact with Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude was in 1985, when he was writing the third work Dog Lane of Red Sorghum Family.
Therefore, it is not accurate to say that the Red Sorghum Family was influenced by Marquez's works.
There was an episode when Red Sorghum was published. At that time, Zhu Wei, editor of People's Literature, saw Mo Yan's work Transparent Carrots and was very optimistic about Mo Yan, thinking that Mo Yan would become a very good writer. Mo Yan once told Zhu Wei that he was going to write an anti-Japanese war novel, and Zhu Wei was very interested. He said to Mo Yan, "You must give it to me when you finish this." Mo Yan said no problem.
After Mo Yan finished writing this novella, Mr. Zhang Shouren, the old editor of October, saw the manuscript on Mo Yan's desk. After he took it back and read it, he said that he wanted to publish the novel in 10. This makes Zhu Wei very worried. In order to compete for this novel, it even alarmed the leaders of the magazine. Finally, the novel was published in People's Literature.
After Mo Yan came up with the idea of writing anti-Japanese war novels, he thought of sorghum in his hometown. When he was young, it rained a lot in his hometown every summer. In this case, it is difficult to survive by planting short crops in the field. Therefore, the villagers planted sorghum on a large scale. Mo Yan believes that sorghum plants are tall and hidden, which is very suitable as a barrier for fugitives.
In this way, he regarded the sorghum field as the "stage" of the novel story.
This is Mo Yan's adaptation based on real historical events. There is a small stone bridge on a river far from his hometown Liuli Road. 1938, there was a battle. At that time, the guerrillas buried their rake teeth in the ground at the bridge head and then ambushed them on both sides of the river bank. When the Japanese car crossed the stone bridge, the tire was punctured by an iron rake. The battle was won. Guerrillas wiped out a Japanese team, burned three Japanese cars and seized many heavy weapons.
The main line of the novel is that Yu Zhanao leads his brothers to ambush the devils on the Mohe Bridge, which is basically consistent with the real historical events.
It is necessary to explain this problem clearly. Jiu-Er, Yu Zhanao and Dou Guan are not based on Mo Yan's grandparents. Generally speaking, they are all characters imagined by Mo Yan. For example, Jiu-Er is a great heroine in the novel. But in reality, Mo Yan's grandmother is just an ordinary rural woman and has no legendary experience like Jiu-Er.
Mo Yan created these characters because he felt that "we need a kind of masculinity and a kind of courage to think, do and take responsibility". He hopes to arouse our high-spirited heroism through these novel characters.
Of course, in some small details, Mo Yan did arrange his family experience for the characters in the novel. In the novel, Jiu-Er's parents married Jiu-Er to a leper for money. This detail stems from the personal experience of a cousin of Mo Yan. Her parents also betrothed her to people with infectious diseases for money, which ruined her life's happiness.
In the movie Red Sorghum, sorghum liquor is all red. In fact, in the novel, it is not like this.
In the novel, the devil tried to catch Jiu-Er's black mule to build a road, but Lohan came out to block it to protect his master's property and was cut by the devil. When the devil sees Jiu-Er, they have evil intentions. In order to protect himself, Jiu-Er put a handful of blood on Lohan's face from her head, and then pretended to be crazy and ran away. After the devil took Lohan away, Jiu-Er washed the blood from his face with a wine jar. Lohan's blood was mixed into the wine, and his bloodshot eyes sank to the bottom of the wine jar.
In the movie, Zhang Yimou omitted these details and directly set the color of kaoliang liquor as red. Zhu Wei, who participated in the screenwriter, once mentioned that in the novel, sorghum wine was dyed red with blood, while the film focused on the muscles of the guys in the brewing process to show their tenacity. He thinks it's worse than the image of blood.
Mo Yan's novels are very famous, but to be honest, they are a little hard to read.
When I read the novel, I was amazed at Mo Yan's writing talent, but I also realized that the novel was a bit patchy. The novel * * * consists of five chapters, and the story of each chapter is independent. If it is connected together, it feels a little unnatural. For example, in the first four chapters of the novel, Yu Zhanao Mohe River ambushed the devils as the main line, but the fifth chapter was an exception, and the line of Yu Zhanao ambushed the devils was completely interrupted.
I think this is related to the particularity of the red sorghum family. This work is different from ordinary novels. At first, five chapters in the book were published as novellas. What I found on the Internet is that these five novellas are all published in different journals. Mo Yan once mentioned that it was only later that these five articles were put together and a general title "Red Sorghum Family" was published as a novel.
So this novel is different from ordinary novels. I feel that the independence of each article is greater than the integrity. If you find it difficult to read as a whole, you can master the meaning of each chapter first, and then read together.
The story line of Yu Zhanao in the novel was interrupted after 194 1 he was attacked when he went to attend a large funeral in Jiu-Er. Why Yu Zhanao came to Hokkaido and how he returned to China is not explained clearly in the novel.
In addition, the novel does not specifically explain why my mother Qianer disappeared around 194 1 1 and how she was found afterwards.
Also, when Yu Zhanao gave a big funeral, he was attacked by ginger and cold pockmarked, Yu Zhanao was captured, and when the devil came to attack, Yu Zhanao rose to kill the enemy again. So, what about Jiu-Er's body? It is also difficult for us to get answers from novels.
Of course, writing is always very detailed, and it is impossible to cover everything. But as a reader, it is inevitable that you will be curious about these "unsolved mysteries".
The TV series has greatly adapted the novel and made a lot of "additions". This novel is based on the story of Yu Zhanao, and this TV play is based on the story of Jiu-Er. The reason for this adaptation, the director said, is to distinguish it from the film and increase the freshness. Second, many characteristics of Jiu-Er are very similar to those of modern women. Thirdly, the film is limited in space, which shows little about Jiu-Er's personality, and TV plays can just make up for this shortcoming.
In the TV series Red Sorghum, Jiu-Er is played by Zhou Xun. Jiu-Er in the novel is a northern woman, with a height of 160 and a weight of 120, while Zhou Xun is short, so she will play Jiu-Er. What would Mo Yan think?
For this question, the TV director once asked Mo Yan. Mo Yan said that his grandmother is only 1.5 meters, and her appearance is not important, only her temperament. His implication is that northern women are not necessarily "big women" with big arms and thick waist, and "image" is more important than "likeness" in Jiu-Er's interpretation.
The novel describes three dogs, a red dog, a green dog and a black dog. I also wrote red fox and weasel. Whether these animals have metaphors is still inconclusive.
Netizens speculated that the fight between three dogs may symbolize the fight between people in reality. These three dogs were domesticated at first, which means "born from the same root", so they may represent the three forces of Jiang, Leng and Yu Zhanao. Of course, this is just a guess.
Lao Geng was stabbed by the devil 18 knife. He said he could survive and was saved by the red fox. If this red fox has a metaphor, I think it should refer to the eight roads. It is mentioned in the novel that Lianer was enchanted by the weasel and later insulted by the devil. The author described the devil's hateful face as a weasel. I think my lover has been enchanted by the weasel, which may mean being insulted by the devil.
Of course, these are just guesses, and there is no exact statement, which needs further study by relevant scholars.
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