Keywords "Red Flag" Feng and his son's personality * * *
Although the word "landlord" has existed since ancient times, such as "Twelve Years of Mourning for the Duke in Zuo Zhuan": "When the husband and the vassal meet, the job is done, and Hou Bo pays tribute, the landlord returns it", but its meaning only refers to "the Lord of the land". With the development of feudal economy, the meaning of the word "landlord" has changed greatly. Used to refer to a class of people who owned land as industrial capital in feudal society. It can be seen that the word "landlord" has been endowed with a specific class attribute, and it is an exploiting class relative to the broad masses of the lower classes. After entering the new era, the special group of "landlords" gradually disappeared in real life.
As a product of a specific history, "landlord" is undoubtedly indispensable in literary creation, and its image-building has its own characteristics in different historical periods. As far as seventeen-year literature is concerned, under the guidance of "Zuo Yan's Speech", the image of landlords in this period obviously has the characteristics of this era, that is, most writers portray landlords as bullies and reactionary forces who exploit and oppress farmers and clash with progressive forces.
Although in "Seventeen Years Literature", the landlord was almost always placed in a completely opposite position to the peasants and was criticized and denied by the author, there are still differences in terms of individual characters, especially the images of Feng Lanchi and Feng Guitang in Red Flag.
1 personality
The difference between Feng and his son is first reflected in their attitudes and methods towards farmers. Feng Lanchi followed the way his ancestors had always treated farmers: he reached out to farmers and cruelly squeezed their blood and sweat; On the other hand, he held his money tightly with his hand for fear that others would take it away. In his attitude towards farmers, he said, "People who suffer are born to work hard." On the one hand, he belittles the survival value and significance of farmers, on the other hand, he enjoys the fruits of labor produced by suffering farmers unscrupulously. He didn't accept his son's advice and thought that farmers should be "benevolent". Instead, he felt that he was good to them and called himself "stupid to the end". In addition, he is wary of farmers. When criticizing his son's "benevolence", he said: "Your benevolence is like keeping a tiger on the kang and a thief at home. When you are strong, the tiger will turn around and open its mouth to eat, and the thief will kill you with a knife. " Look at how extreme and narrow Feng Lanchi's understanding of farmers is! In sharp contrast to Feng Lanchi's conservative thoughts, his son Feng Guitang is "enlightened". Although Feng Guitang was born in a landlord family, he went to college and studied law, so he knew how to deal with the relationship with farmers. He analyzed to his father: "In history, many peasants rebelled because they were rich and heartless, and bandits mushroomed." He advised his father to be "gentle" with the peasants, to be "kind", to feed and clothe them, and to keep them alive. Only by giving more small favors to farmers can the world be peaceful. At the same time, Feng Guitang also advocated "democracy" in the village, suggesting that there should be a Council in the village and everything should be discussed through democracy, so that no one would complain and his father's burden would be reduced. Although the purpose of Feng and his son is to extract more wealth from farmers, it is obvious that the latter's attitude and method towards farmers are more rational and "progressive".
Secondly, there are obvious differences between them in terms of consumption concept. As a representative of the older generation of landlords, Feng Lanchi has always kept in mind the way of life of his ancestors: "They are frugal and keep a house, and people have always been able to eat but not feed animals." Faced with the rich family wealth left by his ancestors, Feng Lanchi chose to keep the tradition of his ancestors: "When it was cold, I wore that tattered cotton robe, which has been worn for fifteen years, and I still wear it. People say white flour meat is delicious, but I only like wheat bran Caicai. You don't want it, food is food in the cellar, and it is not food if it is ruined. " It is not difficult to see that Feng Lanchi has almost no concept of "consumption" in his heart. As long as he can eat and wear warm clothes, he does not pay attention to the quality of life. But this is also a typical manifestation of the meanness and selfishness of the landlord class. The young Feng Guitang is obviously more "consumption conscious". He thought, "The money is gone. No money means no money. People should be able to make money, not money to make people. " He wants to open a big oil mill with peanuts and black beans at home, sell all the wheat in the warehouse when the price of wheat is high, and change the slow ox cart into a faster mule-horse cart. Obviously, young people don't hold money tightly in their hands and be misers like their ancestors, but know how to get a lot of money with little money. It can be said that Feng Guitang is quite similar to many people in contemporary society in terms of consumption concept!
Then, father and son have different views on how to make money. Although Feng Lanchi loves money, he is convinced: "Money earned in a strange way is like not your own meat, so you can't stick to yourself. The correct way to get money is' rent' and' interest'. In addition, although there is a lot of money, it exists in the account like dried radish, and it will be moldy when it rains on cloudy days! " He rejected his son's "fashionable" way of making money and exaggerated his son's behavior to the point of losing his family. Let's first look at his means of expanding the family business. "Lightning thundered on the flat ground, shaking forty-eight villages around Lock Well Town:' brutal bully Feng Lanchi, he wants to smash the ancient clock'", and the ancient clock, as a voucher for forty-eight villages to raise funds to buy official land, will be completely possessed by Feng Lanchi once it is smashed and sold. But when he was young, Feng Lanchi, with the identity of village head and dike head, finally succeeded. Later, he also took advantage of the difficulties of the Yan family and easily seized the treasure of the Yan family. In addition, he got more money by renting land to farmers and lending money to the poor. In Feng Lanchi's eyes, increasing land and collecting land rent and interest is the right way to make money, and that's how he "persisted". Facing his father's conservatism, Feng Guitang's way of making money is completely different from his father's. He abandoned the resignation of the older generation, and planted cotton, sesame and other things that can be exchanged for money in the village according to the method of planting crops in the right place and at the right time, using scientific inference. Introduce the newly invented waterwheel to improve labor efficiency; And also opened an oil mill, a powder room, a flower shop, a grocery store and a flower farm on the street. It is not difficult to see that Feng Guitang's practice is far from his father's practice, even far from the old job of the landlord class, but it is this practice that can not only help the family earn more money, but also alleviate the suffering of the suffering people to a certain extent and make them work harder for themselves.
In addition, in Feng Lanchi, we also saw his feudal superstition, scheming and strong possessiveness. When he was young, Feng Lanchi used his identity as the village head and director of the Qianli levee to dig 48 acres of official land in the village into his own hands under the pretext of selling copper roofs, and also caused Zhu Laogong's family to lose everything. Ironically, Feng Lanchi's main reason for doing this is that "according to the calculation of Yin and Yang, the Feng family courtyard was destroyed when the bronze bell flashed." Feng Lanchi's feudal superstition jumped from the page. Although Feng Lanchi is old. His insatiable personality has not weakened at all, but has become more cruel. For example, after Yan Yuntao and others caught a precious pickled Hong Niao, Feng Lanchi wanted to keep it for himself. After being rejected, in order to get revenge, he used the power of the village head to send Da Gui to the barracks where he did not know when he would return. People who are right with themselves will be punished, which is Feng Lanchi's unchanging lifestyle. In fact, Feng Lanchi, who is old and boring, is still an old goat. "Although old, I married a young wife and went to middle school"; "In the countryside, girls are notoriously beautiful, just like pigs, sniffing their noses and smelling the fragrance." No, he thought he was willing to take out a hectare of land and "make friends and play together" with a trailer and Chunlan!
Compared with the backward and reactionary side of the landlord class, the young Feng Guitang also showed some democracy and progress. For example, after he returned to the village, he advocated improving village administration and establishing a Council; He disagreed with the planting method of leaving crops to their fate in his later years, but taught workers to manage pear trees according to the methods in the book; He also wants to open a chicken farm, raise chickens and rabbits in the village, and even want to raise French river frogs in the pond; He entered the village to open grocery stores and money houses, and even learned to develop a "circular economy" in the village. It can be seen that Feng Guitang is not a simple landlord class. He can be said to have promoted the development of rural capitalist economy. To some extent, we can actually see that Feng Guitang and Wu Sunfu in Midnight are quite similar: both of them are from landlord families, well educated, have new ideas and have their own ways to make money. But the difference is that one devoted the rest of his life to helping the old landlord's father with the housework, and the other practiced the ideal of saving the country through industry in developed capitalist Shanghai.
2 *** Sex
But as the landlord class, no matter how different their personalities are, they still have something in common as landlords. Although Feng Guitang advocated "softening" farmers, he still stood in the perspective of safeguarding his own interests. Although Feng Guitang advised his father to "charge less rent interest to make the suffering people get by", he finally revealed the "fox tail": "The less you expect the suffering people, the more willing they are to try to say that we are good". It turns out that the hidden purpose behind the "Huairou policy" is to eliminate the obstacles in the village, let the farmers work hard and let their families accumulate more wealth. In the face of the peasant uprising against the beheading tax, Feng Guitang finally gave up the "Huairou policy" he had imagined, because the collective will of the * * * production party ruined his plan to make money, and more importantly, he lost himself. Feng Guitang chose to be "soft" with farmers because it would increase his income. But it was because he lost money and face in this movement that he decided to listen to his father's point of view and get rid of "softening" their ideas. It can be seen that Feng Guitang's attitude towards farmers depends entirely on whether this attitude is beneficial to him. Secondly, although Feng and his son are quite controversial about the method of making money, whether it is a fashionable method or a traditional model left by their ancestors; Whether they accumulate wealth by spending less and saving more, or making money while spending money, their purpose of acquiring more wealth is the same. Of course, no matter how much Feng Lanchi doesn't like his son's way of making money, he still does a lot of things that suit his son under the temptation of interests. For example, build a school in the village, open a grocery store in the street, and contract a haircut tax. This shows that no matter how different their thoughts are, as long as their class interests are consistent, they have the possibility of cooperation. In addition, in the face of the surging peasant anti-beheading tax movement, their method is also very tacit, that is, asking the county government for help. Of course, people's help is not in vain, and they should be given some annual gifts to show their gratitude. This reflects the essence of collusion between the landlord class and the bureaucratic class in the old society.
3 Conclusion
Throughout the seventeen-year literature, it can be said that the images of landlords created in this period are all-encompassing: there are both traitors and landlords, such as Wang Wushuang and Wang Kamizhi in Kucai Hua; There are also landlords who undermine land reform, such as the landlords in Lindong and Xiao Ka; There is also the bureaucratic landlord class represented by the family depicted in Sanjiaxiang, and so on. But all these works have one thing in common, that is, they put the landlord class in a position of reaction and exploitation, making them completely opposed to the peasant class and advanced forces. This typed and political symbolic image-building of the landlord can be said to be the product of extending the influence of seat speech.
Different political climate and times atmosphere can produce works of art with different tastes. As far as the images of landlords portrayed in seventeen years' literature are concerned, although their political attributes and social status are the same, and their temperament is more than their personality, we can still see the images of landlords with distinct and different personalities.