1830 is an important year in French history, and the rule of the restoration dynasty made social contradictions acute. The petty bourgeoisie and the common people rebelled against power and demanded higher social status. Stendhal and Balzac, famous French writers, wrote their masterpieces Red and Black and Old Man, respectively. These two works hold a decisive position in the world literary masterpieces with distinctive artistic images. Julien in Tonda's Red and Black and Rasty Nie in Balzac's Gao Lao Tou are endowed with certain ideological and personality characteristics, which have rich social significance and become synonymous with that era.
On the one hand, Julian and Rustini have a lot in common. Julian and Rasty are both kind-hearted people with strong individualistic ideals. They are young people who are exploring their own future, seeking a place and expecting to become "rich great men" during the restoration of the French dynasty. Both of them tried to climb from the bottom of society to the top. There is still a sense of common people. Julian Julian once called himself "noble". He claimed: "I was born humble ... but I am not humble." Because of this, he still refused to beg for mercy from the court controlled by the "bourgeois aristocrats", knowing that he could still get wealth and beauty after Amnesty. Asti Nie Rasty Nie, a poor college student eager to climb up, successfully cheated his aunt and sister of their money. When he wept after reading his mother's letter, he thought of Lao Gao twisting a gold-plated plate and selling money to pay off his daughter's debt. "Your mother also screwed off her jewelry!" He said to himself, "Your aunt sold some precious souvenirs and must have cried! What right do you have to curse Anastasi? She is a lover, and you imitate her actions only for your future. How much better are you than her? " College students feel hot and dry in their internal organs. All these indicate that there is still a little civilian consciousness in the process of Rasty's extinction of human nature.
On the other hand, their images are quite different, mainly in the following three aspects.
First, the goal of climbing is different.
Asti's personal motivation lies more in his yearning for the luxurious life of the upper class and his satisfaction with material desires and vanity. Rasty Nie was born in a poor little aristocratic family from other provinces. The poverty of life and family obligations make him "ten times eager for power and willing to get ahead". So, he came to the neon Paris and realized his dream of climbing to the top of society. At first, he wanted to climb steadily step by step through diligent study. However, the reality around him made him clearly see the bloody role of money again and again: the viscount's lover abandoned her for the benefit of 200,000 francs, and Misuno exposed the true face of Votoring for the reward of 3,000 francs ... All these made Rasty Nie see the true face of society: property is everything. From then on, he began a journey of chasing money. He keeps figuring out where to get money and how to make it. "The desire for luxury bites his heart like a devil, and the enthusiasm for grabbing wealth incites his mind. The thirst for gold made his throat dry. " In the end, the worship of money and power became the life goal pursued by Rasty Nie.
However, Julian's personal motivation focuses on realizing his own value. Julien, a typical French bourgeois intellectual in 191920s, was characterized by self-struggle and had positive progressive significance. But in essence, its deep structure is still civilian consciousness and self-consciousness, which is related to Lian's origin and enlightenment education. Desire to rely on talent to create great things. As the son of a sawmill owner who made a fortune in Villier, Julian's low social status and discrimination and repression in his family environment gave him the determination to struggle, and his yearning for a comfortable and luxurious life and noble social status was also the driving force for Julian's struggle. However, he has a higher goal, that is, his "value" and "honor". Enlightenment education made Lian accept the simple concepts of "freedom" and "equality" and idolized Napoleon, all of which made Lian embark on the road of progressive struggle, which is the main direction. Julian wants to do something Napoleonic. Julian once said enthusiastically, "Napoleon, in your time, people can get wealth from the danger of war instead of despicable plunder from the suffering of the poor. How kind it is." His struggle is positive in some ways, so their images are essentially different.
Second, the struggle to climb up is different.
The two protagonists have different goals, but their routes and endings are also different.
Rasty's struggle process can be summarized as resistance and compromise. Rasty completely degenerated in the pursuit of money. His pursuit of secularization only belongs to the economic category and does not violate the fundamental interests of the ruling class, so he succeeded and finally climbed to the peak of his desire. The process of Rasty's compromise is actually the process of the disappearance of human goodness. As the book says, "Nie of Rasty buried the last tear of young people from other provinces while burying the old man." This is essentially a process of personality decay and alienation of human nature. The process of Rasty's continuous climb is also a process of moral conscience. The tragedies of Julien and Rasty Nie show that it is totally impossible and unworkable for a civilian youth to realize his personal desire for fame and fortune and squeeze into the upper class by personal struggle during the Restoration Dynasty.
Julian's struggle process is compromise and resistance. In the process of constantly pursuing political status, he completely woke up and recognized the cruel reality. Finally, he was deeply desperate for the restoration of society and regretted giving up the truth for vanity. In court, he strongly accused the upper class of suppressing and destroying the civilian youth. After being sentenced to death, he refused to appeal, help and pardon, resisted to death and never compromised, which was the peak of his civilian consciousness and rebellious character. It shows the depression, pursuit and bad luck of a whole generation of young people during the French Restoration. It truly reflects the broad social picture of the French restoration period under the background of tragic fate, illuminates the ugliness and meanness of the reactionary ruling class, and profoundly reveals the essential characteristics of French history in this period.
The means and methods of the third struggle are different.
Because of their different goals, they struggle in different ways. Rasty Nie and Julian both have beautiful appearances and are often favored by upper-class women. In the process of continuous climbing, Rasty Nie knows how to conquer several women who can be his backstage with his enthusiasm, talent and charming appearance, and let him devote himself to the upper class. In the process of interacting with these women, although he repeatedly used the words "infatuation, infatuation, ecstasy", it is hard to say that he has real "love" for them. However, there is no doubt that he used them as a springboard to enter the upper class. For women, he uses temptation more, that is, using women to climb up and down by constantly changing their goals. Fu Tuoleng once said that the road to success for "young people" is neither by virtue nor by talent. On the contrary, it depends on losing virtue and wasting genius. Rasty gave up the way of studying hard and used the woman who fell in love with him to "climb up" step by step.
Julian and Rasty are quite different in pursuing women's motives. Because Julian thinks he has great ambitions since he was a child and doesn't want to do anything condescending to spoil himself. If he looks down on himself, then he has nothing. In Red and Black, Stendhal described the love life of Lian and aristocratic women three times. Besides the pretentious Marshal's wife is Julian's ridiculous tool, Julian's initial motive for pursuing the Mayor's wife is to reduce her contempt for herself or laugh at the open mayor's adult, while the purpose of pursuing the Marquise is to defeat the aristocratic youth and gain equal status with them. His two loves came more from the satisfaction of psychological conquest than from trying to use them to rise to the top.
Fourth, their own personality is different.
Rasty Nie is a typical example of aristocratic children who were corroded by money in capitalist society during the Restoration Dynasty. At first, Rasty was kind-hearted and had a heart of right and wrong. At the same time, the desire for money and status is always calling him. This makes Rasty's ideological character, behavior and behavior often appear contradictions. For a beautiful suit, Rusty wrote to his mother and sister urgently and received a reply. Although he blamed himself for using the feelings of his loved ones so cruelly, he was very proud when he suddenly thought of putting on new clothes and going out to participate in social places. Facing Voltaire's suggestion of murdering Victoria's brother, Rasty's Nie rejected this evil plan on the one hand, but at the same time did not stop his love with Miss Victoria. The death of Lao Gaoman and the ruthlessness of his two daughters made him understand the essence of this society. Let him bury the last bit of conscience and justice. The evaluation of Lian is: "What our hero lacks is sincere courage." . Lian just kept putting on a mask, twisted himself in the big magnetic field of "profit" and "desire", denied his own principles, and set up many roles for himself in his short life, such as "Napoleon's adjutant", "acting bishop", "commander" and even "instructor". In fact, in his environment, he could not help being hypocritical. He had to turn himself into a hypocritical person first, and cover up his real purpose with hypocrisy and cunning.
Even everything in his life has a fierce conflict with his inner world, so he is always in a state of tension, so that he forms a complex of personality contradictions, including courage and timidity, pride and inferiority, fanaticism and depression. Who am I going to have dinner with? He also often said, "I am humble but not humble." In a word, he demands equality everywhere. Even at the critical moment of life, his heart is always full of contradictions. He often thinks: "To be humiliated and betray his conscience for his own purposes?" Is it worth it? The conflict between purpose and means, idea and action often makes him uneasy. The evil reality distorts his personality and makes him suffer from contradictions and pains on the road of hypocrisy. Julian's social success never brought him happiness. Happiness drowned his true self, and he sacrificed his essence for the sake of appearance. However, after all, Julian's nature is good, which makes his disguise always show the cloven foot, his plans are always full of loopholes, his affectation always exposes the truth, his flattery always causes others' suspicion, and finally he will always be regarded as an alien.
It is a tragic life, and his tragic life is an untimely tragedy. Balzac once said, "For some unfortunate people, what they need is either heaven or hell". In fact, both Julian and Rasty were born at an inappropriate time. No matter how the times change, Julian's belief in Napoleon's ideal has always been rock-solid, and the nature in his bones has never been fundamentally changed. Therefore, society will naturally not accept his existence, and Lian can only choose death hell in the end. Rasty's Nie is smarter, smarter and better at sense motive than Lian. When Rasty realized that the times were changing, he integrated his thoughts with the social trends at that time and learned the rules of the game at that time, so he was accepted by the society and could smoothly enter the rich paradise world.