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Cracks and Style Maturity in Ba Jin's Cold Night
Professor Chen Guoen gave several examples to illustrate Ba Jin's work Cold Night.

The first example is an article written by Professor Chen, The Cold Night of Ba Jin: Cracks in Text and Maturity of Style. The opportunity for him to write this article is that in the process of reading Ba Jin's novel Cold Night, he feels sad for the fate of his characters, but at the same time he strongly feels that Ba Jin has obvious contradictions in dealing with some key figures, mainly Zeng Shusheng, one of the heroines.

Zeng Shusheng and her husband Wang Wenxuan are college classmates, and they are free to fall in love. Wang Wenxuan is a modern figure with a very weak personality. Zeng Shusheng is full of energy. She works as a clerk in a bank and plays the role of a vase. She is beautiful, passionate and charming. Because of the special background of the Anti-Japanese War, and because a mother-in-law at home was unreasonable and conservative, she refused to admit their marriage of free love, and even called her daughter-in-law a son's concubine. Wang Wenxuan was very ill and weak, and his life was almost hopeless. His family is basically supported by Zeng Shusheng's income. In this environment, the fierce conflict between her mother-in-law and Zeng Shusheng made Zeng Shusheng almost unbearable. Based on a sincere love for her husband, she managed to maintain such a relationship, but in the end, the contradiction became more and more acute, and her mother-in-law was arrogant and powerless, so she finally had a big fight and Zeng Shusheng strongly demanded a divorce.

Out of sincere love for his wife, Wang Wenxuan wanted Zeng Shusheng to live, agreed to divorce, and said it was time for you to go. When Zeng Shusheng asked for a divorce, she hoped that Wang Wenxuan would stop objecting, and she also realized that Wang Wenxuan would not raise such an objection. In such a strong psychological conflict, both unwilling and eager to leave home at the same time, a couple parted ways.

Zeng Shusheng finally followed a director Chen of her bank, a rich and motivated director Chen, to work in the branch of Lanzhou Bank. These are all beautifully written, but the problem lies in the end of the work. Zeng Shusheng didn't hear from Wang Wenxuan for several months, and she was very worried. In fact, Wang Wenxuan died on the night of the victory of the Anti-Japanese War. He heard firecrackers outside the door and learned that the Anti-Japanese War had been won. He said that the scholar would come back, but he bid farewell to the world at this critical time, which was a very tragic ending.

Zeng Shusheng didn't get the information for months. She was very concerned and flew from Lanzhou to Chongqing, looking forward to seeing her husband. But when she learned about her home, she was greeted by a strange face when she opened the door. Upon inquiry, the new tenant told her that Wang Wenxuan had died and her mother-in-law and their son were missing. At the end of the work, Zeng Shusheng wandered the streets of Chongqing on a cold night.

This is a very sad story. What Professor Chen felt at that time was that after Ba Jin came back from dealing with Zeng Shusheng,

Found the problem:

? The development of the story plot does not conform to the character and story logic.

Obviously, it does not conform to Zeng Shusheng's character, nor does it conform to her already clear relationship with this family at that time.

According to Zeng Shusheng's character, she has already broken up with Wang Wenxuan: ① she can't come back, ② she won't expect a second time when she comes back.

Of course, it is also possible to come back, but it will not come back with expectations and wishes like the second time. I don't know his information for a few months at most, and I want to come back to understand the situation or deal with the aftermath. By the time she left home, she had solved the contradiction that could not be solved before and cut off the emotional connection with Wang Wenxuan. When she left home, all these confusions and nostalgia vanished. She can't be dragged down by this emotion and come back all the way without knowing her husband's information for months. Even if I want to come back, I am not in such an urgent mood to meet again.

Professor Chen believes that this is a problem left over by Ba Jin in dealing with the development of characters. How to deal with this problem? Can you describe her as a failure of Ba Jin's creation?

The characters are inconsistent in character.

The plot development lacks logic.

This is a crack in the text.

That's obviously hard to accept, and in fact it's not. So Professor Chen thought at that time that this was a crack in the text, and the crack itself did not attract people's attention before. From this, we can find some meaningful problems, so the title of his article, the cracks in the text and the maturity of his style of writing germinated.

The cracks in the text are objective facts. The problem is how to make a reasonable explanation. Therefore, Professor Chen's article is divided into three parts, trying to clarify specific issues.

The article is divided into three parts:

The first part: "the cracks in the text", such cracks, contradictions in personality, and the lack of logic before and after the plot are facts.

The second part: "the author's interference", emphasizing that this crack is actually the result of the writer's strong intervention for a subjective intention.

The third part: Emphasize the maturity of Ba Jin's style.

This is the result of Ba Jin's subjective intervention in the development of character and plot. Why did Ba Jin intervene? Ba Jin's writing style lies in criticism. He wanted to write about the humble fate and bleak ending of the little people, so as to accuse the feudal family of strangling human nature. At this stage of the cold night, he wants to sue the society.

My creation is accusation,

When they are oppressed, shout out their inner sadness and indignation at life,

I want to cry with these characters. (Ba Jin)

This is a style of Ba Jin, who wants to accuse Chongqing of social chaos and the bankruptcy of authorities' policies under the anti-Japanese war environment. In order to strengthen the effect of this accusation, we can understand that Zeng Shusheng's departure has made Wang Wenxuan die in loneliness, and he already has a strong accusation power, but he wants to further strengthen this accusation power. What should we do to let Zeng Shusheng come back from Lanzhou, let her experience the tragic ending of family destruction and death, and let her wander in the cold night on the streets of Chongqing. The power of this accusation is shocking.

Ba Jin needs to have this effect. If Zeng Shusheng ran away from home and disappeared, the power of emotional accusation in his works would certainly not be as strong as it is now. Let Zeng Shusheng come back, let her witness where are you going, and let readers feel a strong tremor in their hearts. In strong sympathy, they pointed their anger at the reality at that time and issued an angry cry to the Kuomintang authorities. This is Ba Jin's subjective will, so Zeng Shusheng must come back.

How to get her back? Although coming back is not in line with Zeng Shusheng's character, Ba Jin strongly hopes that she will come back, so it must be written that Zeng Shusheng came to her original family with strong expectations for the reunion of husband and wife, and finally gave her such a sad ending.

In this novel, Ba Jin,

Just to strengthen the accusation against society and Kuomintang rule,

He does not hesitate to go against the inherent logic of the characters.

The logic of this story,

Arranged an ending where you will go.

This is the second part of the article, emphasizing that it is the result of the writer's intervention.

From Ba Jin's Home to Cold Night, Ba Jin's creative style is really maturing, which is the embodiment of his personal characteristics. He can go deep into the hearts of characters and show the dialectics of psychological development. There are contradictions in the characters' personalities, but Ba Jin's artistic skills are enough to make up for such cracks in personality and texts as much as possible.

An example can illustrate Ba Jin's skills. When the relationship between Wang Wenxuan and Zeng Shusheng was about to break up several times, Zeng Shusheng came back and heard that Wang Wenxuan had gone to work. She told her mother-in-law that Wenxuan was in poor health. Why does she go to work? I can afford the money my family needs. This is a good expression of goodwill and concern for her husband, but surprisingly, it attracted a scolding from her mother-in-law. Mother-in-law is bitter about their previous free love, thinking that they did not hold a formal sedan chair wedding ceremony, but a pair of mistresses. This is meaningless. Zeng Shusheng was kind enough to care about her husband's current situation, but instead attracted a scolding from her mother-in-law. She flew into a rage and ran away from home. On the way, she met Wang Wenxuan and said I want to divorce you.

The relationship between husband and wife is irreversible, but Ba Jin's ingenuity lies in his design. How to design? He asked Wang Wenxuan to tell Zeng Shusheng that the reason why I dragged my sick body to work in the company was to come up with some money to buy you a birthday present. In such a war-torn era, Zeng Shusheng has forgotten his birthday, but her husband Wang Wenxuan still remembers the birthday gift she tried to give her. Do you think this feeling can move people's hearts? After listening to Wang Wenxuan's explanation, Zeng Shusheng immediately relented and went home together.

When organizing conflicts in the plot development, Ba Jin is very good at using this skill to build a bridge between challenges and dilemmas in the plot development, overcome the unimaginable contradictions of ordinary people, and make it go to another climax smoothly. This shows that Ba Jin's artistic expression skills are mature, delicate and expressive. Similarly, we say that Zeng Shusheng finally returned to Chongqing from Lanzhou and Chongqing, which is not in line with her personality. However, Ba Jin made full use of the sincere feelings established by Zeng Shusheng and Wang Wenxuan in free love, which made readers ignore the cracks in her personality in a sympathy and recognized the current situation that Zeng Shusheng went home to see her husband, so this contradiction was covered up.

What is even more shocking is that Zeng Shusheng's relatives have disappeared after he returned to China. The tragic ending touched people's hearts and triggered thinking about a life problem. Anger at the social chaos at that time also recognized the theme of one of Ba Jin's designs. The beginning of the work is a night when Chongqing escaped the big bombing. At the end, Zeng Shusheng wandered in the cool streets of Chongqing, forming such a complete structure, expressing a kind of grief and indignation at the same time, which has a strong artistic appeal. Isn't this a prominent sign that Ba Jin's style is maturing?

Therefore, we should not only put forward the cracks in the text, but also emphasize that this crack is the result of Ba Jin's intervention, and Ba Jin has enough artistic skills to make this intervention more natural. This is a problem that Professor Chen found when reading this book. He thinks that raising this question will help us to understand the theme of Cold Night a little bit.