Fortress Besieged is a comedy at first sight and a tragedy at second sight, but it is by no means a social tragedy, a personality tragedy or a fate tragedy in the general sense, and it is difficult to cover it with traditional aesthetic concepts. From the outside, the characters, plot, language and details of the whole work do not have the tragic characteristics in the strict sense, and the comedy is more obvious, but the whole work is shrouded in a strong tragic atmosphere. The external theme of Fortress Besieged is to show a group of neo-Confucians' various competitions in love and vanity fair in a specific period, and its potential theme is to reveal the spiritual vagrancy of modern people. Throughout the whole article, the focus is on the loneliness and wandering of modern people, showing a sense of life and universe, and raising this feeling to a metaphysical height, so Fortress Besieged is a philosophical tragedy.

It is not uncommon to see works that express tragic content in the form of comedy, such as Lu Xun's True Story of Ah Q, works of western modernism, especially black humor. The former created a "soul of our people" with a cartoon-like exaggeration, which made young people laugh, middle-aged people ponder, and old people frown. People of different classes and nationalities can see their own shadows in Ah Q's mirror. The latter expresses the sad content in a teasing and mocking way. Black humor writers believe that the pain of life is too deep and too much, and it is not enough to express it in the form of drama and tragedy, but to reflect the essence of reality with almost cruel ridicule. Fortress Besieged is different from the above two kinds of works, and its tragic consciousness is deeply hidden in the works, which requires us to think repeatedly before we can understand it. Qian Zhongshu said: "Humor is of course vented by laughter, but laughter is not necessarily humor." Qian Zhongshu's humor is unique as a scholar. He combines humor with witty satire, which is rich and subtle, sharp and interesting.

The comedy of Fortress Besieged is first manifested in shaping a group of ironic characters. There are more than 60 characters in the works, but there are no clear good guys or bad guys in the strict sense. Although they are all foreign doctors and university professors studying in Europe and the United States, they are all people with status in the upper class, but they are actually superficial, contradictory and ridiculous. Are the objects of ridicule by the author, full of comedy.

The protagonist Fang Hung-chien, the son of a former Qing Dynasty juren, is weak in character, with neither lofty ideals nor real talents. When I was a university student in China, I transferred from sociology department to philosophy department, and finally graduated from Chinese department. Studying in Europe, I changed to three universities in four years. In fact, I am a wandering "student". Sue is a rich and beautiful doctor of literature who graduated from the University of Lyon, France. In fact, she is a coquettish and affected woman, who shows her copied German poems as her representative works and is good at dealing with several men. Sun Roujia looks naive and shy, but in fact she is a shrewd, selfish and heartless bitch. As the president of National San Lv University, Gao Songnian is an ignorant and sophisticated politician. Li, the dean of this school, pretends to have a profound moral education, but in fact he is just a despicable * * *, prostitute, selling fake drugs and obsessed with prying into other people's privacy. Wang Chuhou, head of the Chinese Department, is a political strategist who slipped into the academic world after falling into the water politically. Han, a professor of history, is dull in appearance and cunning in heart. He is a fake scholar with forged academic qualifications and full of confidence. Zhao is a doctor of political science studying in America. He smokes a pipe and is a pseudonym. Whenever possible, he always gives speeches. Minor figures, such as Shen Ming, claim to be equal to the famous western philosophers Russell and Bergson, and even call Russell by his nickname-Betty. In fact, he is just a fake philosopher who writes a letter of praise to world-famous philosophers and then swindles out of politeness. He is an education expert Mr. Yuanjing who speaks "When My Brother is in England" once a minute on average. Every sentence has English words. Whether it is the main characters, or the little people who have only appeared once, even the greedy porters, selfish shopkeepers, superstitious country people, boring squires, small towns and other nameless lower-class people are the targets of Qian Zhongshu's ridicule. His satire is directed at everyone, and every type of society he describes makes people laugh. The author uses irony and humor to show the boredom, incompetence, absurdity, shallowness, hypocrisy and cunning of these characters, so Fortress Besieged is called a "new Confucian".

The comedy of Fortress Besieged is also reflected in the plot, and many plots of the work are characterized by farce. The whole article takes Fang Hung-chien's life wandering and spiritual wandering as the clue. Under this main line, the author arranged some plots similar to gag, resulting in a comedy effect of side branch escape. Fang Hung-chien learned nothing in Europe and bought a fake doctorate from an Irish swindler. When he returned to his hometown, because he was a doctor, the headmaster of the middle school asked him to give a speech entitled "The influence of western culture in the history of China". Unexpectedly, he left his speech at home, so he made a fuss about opium syphilis, which stunned the audience and made the girls afraid to look up. The headmaster repeatedly signaled him to stop with a cough, even his voice was broken, and he was still talking there. The author satirizes the protagonist's incompetence with a relaxed farce. For another example, Fang Hung-chien immediately fell into a multi-angle love affair after returning to Shanghai. Zhao, Sue's suitor, always regarded Fang Hung-chien as a rival in love. When the truth came out, he became a "brother in the same boat". Some plot arrangements in the work that seem to have little to do with Fang Hung-chien's fate also enhance the comedy of the whole work. For example, the tutorial system of San Lv University is said to have been moved from Oxford and Cambridge, which stipulates that teachers should eat at the same table as students. These university professors have had a lot of discussions about this, and their opinions cannot be unified. Fang Hung-chien joked, "Just share a bed with the students." The arrangement of this plot seems to make a mountain out of a molehill, but it is a stroke of genius. On the one hand, it wrote the absurdity of copying foreign regulations, and also wrote the selfishness, greed and vulgarity of these university professors, which made people laugh.

The humorous metaphor in Fortress Besieged also enhances the comic style of the work. Fortress Besieged is a scholar's novel, involving astronomy, geography, literature, philosophy, psychology and logic. In narration, the author uses wonderful metaphors and rich imagination to satirize, which makes the whole work full of sense of humor. Generally speaking, these two things are similar. Qian Zhongshu's metaphors are mostly strange metaphors. He is good at linking ontology with distant metaphors, and his imagination can surpass ordinary people's thinking mode, which makes people surprised and happy. If Miss Bao dresses up as a bar girl, all the overseas students on the same boat give her a nickname "Deli Shop", because only a deli will publicly display so much warm meat. Some people call her "truth" because it is said that truth is naked, but Miss Bao is not, so it is changed to "partial truth". For example, comprador Zhang Jimin always likes to put some English words that are not difficult to express in Chinese. The author says that his English is not as good as gold teeth embedded in his mouth, because gold teeth can be used for decoration. Mr. Zhang's English can only be better than the food scraps in his teeth except that the food is good. For example, Gao Songnian was an old scientist, and then the author commented: "This old word is difficult to describe science and scientists. Unfortunately, science is different from scientists. Scientists are like wine. The older you get, the more valuable you are, and science is like a woman. When they are old, they are worthless. " These analogies skillfully combine seemingly solemn and elegant objects with vulgar and humble things, which makes this analogy have unexpected accuracy and sense of humor. In the works, this wonderful metaphor can be seen everywhere, and readers always laugh, showing the author's rich imagination and wit.

The language of Fortress Besieged is not only novel, accurate, concise and humorous, but also has the unique style of literati. It is also reflected in the extensive use of rhetorical devices similar to word games in the text, which often leads to the comic style of novel creation. For example, Gao Songnian, as the principal, knows all about the three hospitals and ten departments of the school. The word "pass" is like the "pass" of "smooth train" and "smooth stomach". Here, the author uses the word "escape" and changes the meaning of "familiarity" to "directness", which is extremely ridiculous. Others, such as "it is said that' girlfriend' is the scientific name of' lover', which is more solemn, just like roses are biologically called' woody plants with compound leaves in Rosaceae' or the legal term of' divorce by agreement'". Both reveal wit and insight into life in humorous descriptions, giving people enlightenment and thinking.

To sum up, the whole Fortress Besieged is full of humor, humor, banter and ridicule, showing an obvious comedy style. However, if the understanding of the work is limited to this, it means that the meaning has not been solved. We laugh when we watch Fortress Besieged, but when we relate the protagonist's life experience to the whole modern civilization in the 20th century, our laughter stops. We laugh at the characters in the works, ourselves and the environment in which we live. There is criticism, sympathy and discovery in laughter, from which we can gain discernment and experience more complicated and profound things. It is true that Fortress Besieged takes Fang Hung-chien's life experience as the main line, and personal fate becomes the main line of the work. The people around him are just the same or similar intellectuals in a specific period, but the meaning of his works goes far beyond the narrow regional and national characteristics, and also beyond a specific era. It can be said to be the most universal novel. The work has said more than once that "marriage is like a besieged castle. People in the city want to escape and people outside the city want to rush in". This is the best interpretation of the whole Fortress Besieged. The work is about marriage, but it goes far beyond the scope of marriage and entrusts the author with profound philosophical thinking on life. In this way, the work not only shows the life of intellectuals in the rear area during the Anti-Japanese War, but also shows the embarrassment of the whole modern civilization and modern people's life, showing a very keen sense of modernity and a real sense of modernity, so as to reflect on some eternal propositions about the value, meaning and human nature of life, thus raising the ideological implication of the work to a metaphysical height.

Starting from this tragic proposition, we will find that Fang Hung-chien's tragedy is actually the tragedy of all people in modern civilization, not the tragedy of individuals, classes or nations. Its confusion is the confusion of modern people. Fang Hung-chien's life is a process of going in and out of the city, and he took a road of loss, failure and final disillusionment. In his experience, what readers see is a deep sense of wandering, without attachment and loneliness. Therefore, the tragic consciousness of Fortress Besieged is first manifested in the profound implication of human existence, which implies the blindness and panic of modern people's existence. The book is organized around Fang Hung-chien's wandering experience: studying abroad-returning to China-falling in love-teaching-getting married-looking for a job-losing his job and family. A person came back from France, turned around, or a person. In this process, Fang Hung-chien never found his own position and never had anything. But the profundity of the work lies in revealing Fang Hung-chien's spiritual vagrancy. Spiritual wandering and seeking spiritual home are the most prominent personality characteristics of modern people. Xia Zhiqing said: "The writer dramatically shows the gradual shrinkage of Fang Hung-chien's spirit until he has nothing." This accurately sums up Fang Hung-chien's tragedy. From the perspective of philosophical humanism, people always have to grasp something in this world, such as career, love, family, fame and fortune. Let life have value and meaning, and the spirit has attachment and sustenance. Fang Hung-chien just lost this certainty and sense of security, and his life typically embodies the spiritual vagrancy that the soul does not know where to come from and where to go.

It can be seen that Fang Hung-chien didn't have a clear goal from the beginning. His father wanted him to respect his ancestors, so he was educated. His father-in-law gave him money to study abroad and satisfied his vanity, so he went to Europe. He has learned nothing from going to college at home and studying abroad. No wonder Zhao met him for the first time and asked, "What is Mr. Fang studying abroad?" He said, "Nothing." Returning to Shanghai should be a turning point for Fang Hung-chien, but the initial excitement was followed by a series of practical problems. His career is hard to find, and his love is hard to find. He immediately felt a sense of emptiness and could only muddle along in his father-in-law's bank. It was also an opportunity to go to San Lv University, but the school asked him to talk about ethics that he didn't even understand, so he had to fool around. In addition, San Lv University's complicated personnel dispute made him dizzy and lost for half a year.

Secondly, looking at Fang Hung-chien's love, he had emotional entanglements with four women in his life. If we say that he and Miss Bao take part in accidental amusement, and Sue are involuntarily, and they are serious about it, they will eventually fail. Tang Xiaofu is the only woman that Fang Hung-chien falls in love with. Although they were sincere and pure in love, they broke up inevitably in the end. Obviously, what separates them is not family, society, feudal family concept and bourgeois money relationship, but themselves. They are all modern intellectuals with independent spirit. His love tragedy has nothing to do with the struggle for personality liberation and marital autonomy during the May 4th Movement, but the result of the inability to communicate and understand between people. Imagine that even people who love each other are hard to trust, so others are not a high wall hell. Western modernists believe that one's most difficult enemy to defeat is oneself. Eugene O 'Neill, a modern American playwright, said: In the past, people struggled with themselves, but now people struggle with themselves. For modern people, the question is not whether an individual can change external things, but to what extent he can change himself. Fang Hung-chien's love tragedy and even his life tragedy have proved this truth. Therefore, in the complicated personnel dispute of San Lv University, he can't adapt and can't do anything. He must be excluded and left out.

Let's look at Fang Hung-chien's marriage (family). After he broke up with Tang Xiaofu, although his enthusiasm for life decreased a lot, his spirit was not completely exhausted. After leaving San Lv University, in the face of external social forces and survival crisis, Fang Hung-chien only had his family as his only line of defense. However, after marriage, Sun Roujia changed his innocence and shyness, and showed his instinctive talent and great taste, which made him disappointed with his family and lost this last support. In fact, after marriage, Fang Hung-chien was disappointed with his family. He once said with emotion: "It is naive to think so seriously about love before marriage. To tell the truth, no matter who you marry, after you get married, you will always find that you are not married to the original person, but you are a different person. If you had known this, you could have saved your pursuit of love before you got married. On the contrary, the old marriage is simple, and no one knows anyone before marriage. " This is his disillusionment with marriage and his profound experience of life. Finally, it can be seen that he is completely disappointed with the marriage based on * * *.

Fortress Besieged truly shows the whole process of the protagonist's loss, variation and complete disillusionment in the indispensable stages of life such as education, career, love and family, and reflects the sense of loneliness, loss, despair and absurdity in life. In his life journey, Fang Hung-chien is always accompanied by deep and unavoidable pain, which he can't stand most. Fang Hung-chien's loneliness is not the idleness of the idle class, but is essentially different from that of the old constantly chauffeured. He embodies the true feelings of modern people about the universe and life. The loneliness of modern people is not the sadness of cherishing friends and hometown alone in the bleak wind and bitter rain, nor the compassion of "when the sun sets, heartbroken people are at the end of the world", but the sadness of comforting each other with body temperature in the noise; It is not the silence of "there are no birds in a hundred mountains, and there are no footprints in a thousand paths", but no one knows it in the crowded street and no one really understands it in the room; Know yourself. Fortress Besieged shows the deep-rooted loneliness of modern people. Therefore, Xia Zhiqing believes that Fortress Besieged is "a novel to explore people's loneliness and inability to communicate".

The tragic implication of Fortress Besieged is also reflected in the contradictions and tragedies of the characters. Fang Hung-chien always can't find his own position in life, which has a lot to do with his personality. He was born in a traditional aristocratic family and has been abroad. Traditional culture and western culture have a deep influence on him, so his personality is contradictory. Although he is narrow-minded and cowardly, he is kind and upright at the same time. Only in this way can he always feel out of place with the people around him and can't join them, so he often feels. In fact, Fang Hung-chien is not numb. He has a little conscience and can keep a clear head when people around him are drifting with the tide. At that time, for example, studying abroad was a fashion. Many people don't really want to learn anything, but Fang Hung-chien is sober. He once said to Tang Xiaofu, "Studying abroad now is as famous as the imperial examination in Qing Dynasty. In the past, people always regretted how much they had done to your officials. Studying abroad can also free them from this inferiority complex, not for profound knowledge. Going abroad is like getting a pox, having a rash, and going out ... "So, he learned nothing in Europe. It can be said that it is ignorance or disdain. Imagine that Cao Yuanlang, a so-called new poet who knows nothing about Chinese and Western cultures, pretends to be a graduate of Cambridge and Oxford, and even Miss Su, who copied a German poem from the full text as her own work, can get a doctorate in French literature, so it should not be a problem to mix the doctorate with Fang Hung-chien's wit and cleverness. By the same token, if Fang Hung-chien has Gao Songnian's sophistication, Li's selfishness at others' expense, Han's impudence, Zhao's arrogance and irrationality, Su's opportunism, Miss Bao's capriciousness and Sun Roujia's selfishness, then he can also get along in this mutually-utilized and conflicting society. Because he has a clearer sense of self than others, he saw that in an absurd and irrational world, life is difficult to grasp, and individuals can't control their own destiny, and they are unwilling to go with the flow and unable to resist. Therefore, they treat life irrationally blindly and take an irresponsible attitude. They just want to take a chance and can only fail. Fang Hung-chien's misfortune is that he still wants to find the truth in a cold society. His pain is that he still wants to bear the truth in a hypocritical world; His silence is that he still wants to pursue hope in a dead environment, so his ending can only be a tragedy, a philosophical tragedy revealed in Fortress Besieged.