Fang Hung-chien is the hero of Fortress Besieged, China's most famous modern novel. His works focus on his relationship with several women, as well as his experiences and personnel conflicts when he was transferred from Shanghai to San Lv University in the Mainland. His personality characteristics are kindness and pedantry, integrity and weakness, ignorance and cynicism. Fang Hung-chien's ideological character reflected the mental outlook of some intellectuals at that time, and his experience was also the experience and hardship of some relatively upright intellectuals at that time.
Fortress Besieged, as a wonderful flower in the history of China literature, has won the reputation of "modern scholar" with its incomparable satirical artistic charm, analysis of the cowardly personality roots of intellectuals in old China and incisive realistic charm. Up to now, there is still a feeling of life that is often read and always new, which gives readers profound enlightenment in life with profound and rich ideological connotation.
Fang Hung-chien, the hero of Fortress Besieged, is an artistic image of a senior intellectual who is looking for a spiritual home everywhere in old China. The son of a gentleman in the south of the Yangtze River, when he was studying in Peking, because he couldn't learn civil engineering, which was highly valued in his hometown, he transferred to the Department of Sociology and finally to the Department of Literature in China, and barely graduated. Due to an accidental factor (the help of their future husbands), they embarked on the road of studying abroad unprepared. It seems a bit funny for China learners to go abroad for further study, but "in Europe, they didn't copy Dunhuang volumes, didn't visit the Yongle Ceremony, and couldn't find the documents of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom ... In four years, they changed to three universities, London, Paris and Berlin; I listened to a few classes casually, and I had a wide range of interests, but I learned nothing. I have nothing but boasting. When I returned home, under the threat of my father and father-in-law, I tried my best to buy a doctorate from Clayton University in the United States in order to prevaricate.
During his college years in Beiping, influenced by the new trend of thought of personality liberation, he yearned for independent love. He got up the courage to write to his father asking for the dissolution of the arranged marriage, and finally he was thrown with a bucket of cold water. In his flirting with Miss Bao and Sue's social intercourse, he gradually realized the difference between "girlfriend" and "lover". When he met the rare Tang Xiaofu in modern society, he really fell in love, but they all fell in love.
Perhaps in order to escape the pain of the soul, Fang Hung-chien and Zhao embarked on the road of going to college to apply for jobs. Although San Lv University is located in a remote village in Hunan, it is far from a pure land. There is a respectable old scoundrel who keeps on defending the dignity of education, but in fact it is Gao Songnian, the headmaster of a philistine and an alcoholic. There is a fake foreign doctor, Han, who is dull in appearance and cunning in heart; Wang Chuhou, an old bureaucrat who slipped politically and mixed in school; Lu Ziyuan, a shallow and petty villain, loves to brag and flatter others ... Fang Hung-chien, who is aloof and inaction, was finally squeezed out of the intrigue of dozens of intellectuals in Sanyan University and was dismissed.
Before he woke up from the setbacks in his career, he was lured by Sun Roujia and fled to "a marriage in Sun Roujia where he was not sure whether he loved him or not", thinking that this was a happy harbor where he could escape from failure and depression and pursue a free life. Maybe Sun Roujia was too calculating before marriage. After marriage, Fang Hung-chien suddenly found himself married to someone else. The contradiction between his new home and his hometown intensified the contradiction between them. Besides, they have different personalities and are difficult to get along with. Finally, he left behind yesterday's disappointment and finally rushed out of the family siege with inexplicable hope for tomorrow.
There are many reasons for Fang Hung-chien's tragedy. What matters is his subjective reasons and the influence of objective living environment.
(A) Fang Hung-chien's own factors
The biggest feature of Fang Hung-chien's personality is his lack of rationality, belief, enthusiasm and strength to fight against the cruel competition for survival and serious spiritual crisis in modern society, and he often involuntarily reveals cowardice, confusion and recklessness.
As early as when Fang Hung-chien was studying in college, he had the idea of independent love. But under his father's painful scolding, he was "scared to death" and immediately gave up his idea. He stopped dreaming and began to study Schopenhauer. He often comforted himself and said to his classmates, "There is no love in the world, it is just a reproductive impulse." Fang Hung-chien's cowardly character is exposed here. Later, in the association with female doctor Su, he knew that he and she were "like two parallel straight lines, no matter how close they are, no matter how long they draw, they can't come together." Sue, on the other hand, pays equal attention to kindness and prestige, and is slow to express her mind in the combination of rigidity and softness. When he lost the most beloved woman in his life, Tang Xiaofu, his heart was so thin that he was like a lonely ghost isolated from the world. Looking at the pleasures of the world, he couldn't get in, but Fang Hung-chien didn't have the courage to turn the tide. Just say, "You're right. I am a liar. I dare not argue any more. I will never hate it again. " Then stood up and left. At this critical moment of grasping happiness, he did not actively strive for and explain, but ended the originally happy love so rashly, which cannot but be said to be due to his natural cowardice.
He never dared to face up to his inner pain, but avoided it blindly. He went all the way to San Lv University to apply for a job, but he was not satisfied. He was excluded and slandered, but he was unable to fight. He was tempted by Sun Roujia and was at his mercy. Instead of reprimanding Kao Sung-nien for breaking his word, he left impulsively and escaped into the "gentle net" set by Sun Roujia. But he was wrong, just like the French proverb: marriage is a besieged castle. People outside the city want to rush in, while people in the city want to escape. This is not Fang Hung-chien's refuge and destination. Because of his cowardice, he would rather give up than face the reality. Being scolded three times by Sun Roujia, "Coward, I don't want to see you again" added a very vivid finishing touch to Fang Hung-chien's tragedy like the climax of the drama.
"Just like no one can choose their own birth. People can't choose the traditional culture that they were surrounded and infected at birth. " Fang Hung-chien was born in a traditional aristocratic family, and his father was a juren in the pre-Qing Dynasty. "My husband was taught by Laozi and won the first place in the senior high school entrance examination." It can be seen that traditional culture has a deep influence on him. China's traditional culture is mainly the culture of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism. Confucianism advocates actively joining the WTO, but Fang Hung-chien has a Taoist attitude. With the development of history, Taoist culture has become a stereotype rooted in the national consciousness of China people. Taoism's concepts of weakness over strength, tranquility and less selfish desires have been deeply rooted in people's hearts and become the way of life of China people. It became a person. It is also an important genetic factor that forms people's cowardice, incompetence and inability to resist earning. So that everyone who receives traditional education, whether you like it or not, will leave traces in your subconscious. This is the constraint of culture on people, and this constraint is even stronger for Fang Hung-chien who has a deep understanding of traditional culture. In my opinion, this is the biggest vice in Fang Hung-chien's character.
Who knows, in the face of the hypocritical, ugly, absurd and boring real world, the sharp conflict between old and new cultures and all kinds of complicated interpersonal relationships, compromise and concession can only objectively encourage the arrogance of evil forces, thus leading to the tragic conflict between the inevitable requirement of history and the fact that this requirement cannot be realized. What Fang Hung-chien has is only desire itself, but what he doesn't have is the real motivation to turn desire into practice. He can only gallop in success. For Fang Hung-chien, there is only one way, except to retreat, that is, to escape, wandering, hesitating, depressed and struggling in this contradiction and pain, which determines his tragic life.
Secondly, Fang Hung-chien never found his own life coordinates in the cultural conflict between China and the West, so that his thoughts, words and deeds were at a loss, which was also an important reason for his life tragedy.
Chasing and frolicking with Miss Bao, who has a fiance, on the return boat shows Fang Hung-chien's cynicism and absurdity. He blamed Miss Bao for her bad behavior, but he was very excited about her temptation. Therefore, "their friendship grows as fast as tropical plants". Fang Hung-chien only felt that he wanted Miss Bao, "but he didn't love her", but "he didn't love her" had an affair with her. Miss Bao played with him and ignored him, and his heart flew into a rage. "Disappointment, the lust of being cheated, and the injured self-esteem refused to lie down, unlike Weng, who stood up after being pressed, but shook even harder." He was obviously played, and the fire in his heart has not subsided, but he comforted himself that he would "not suffer" and "take advantage". "Miss Bao is not wholeheartedly, but a piece of meat, because she has no heart. After a long time, it can only be counted, and the meat will go bad." On the contrary, he is complacent, but his pursuit of pure, natural, intelligent and charming Tang Xiaofu is extremely serious and cautious. However, at the critical moment related to happiness or not, he took an attitude of inaction. In the case of "losing autonomy", he married Sun Roujia. This is how he stepped into the siege of his life under the war between two cultures and driven by extremely contradictory mentality. He tried to get rid of all the shackles and live a free and independent life, but in the end he fell into a new siege.
Fang Hung-chien described the doctoral degree as "like the role of Eve and Adam's lower body leaves", but under the influence of worshipping foreign things, he had to buy a fake diploma to explain to his family. In order to cover up his shortcomings, he also wrote a letter at home saying that he hated the name "doctor" most in his life. This time, he could not avoid vulgarity and inhumanity, but became a "foreign doctor". His body and mind expanded and his personality became better. " He also has a truly frank side. He truthfully filled in the registration information of San Lv University, saying that he didn't get a degree, but was just a "tourist student". It was not until he met Han who cheated his doctorate in the same way in college that he felt that he had lied and had to speak his conscience. He is such a fool that he only got an associate professor as a helper. Even Miss Su laughed at him.
Fang Hung-chien's bumpy experience of returning to his hometown in Wan Li to find a job also showed his contradictory attitude towards society and life. At first, with the help of her husband, he worked as a bank clerk, like a caged bird, obedient and humble. The son-in-law couldn't tolerate his free love and ordered him to leave the manager's office with swagger and pride. He thinks highly of himself. During the trip, he felt that it was "shameful depravity" to associate with hooligans like Li and Gu Erqian. He was also extremely disgusted with Gao Songnian's use of politicians to run education, but he knew that he had been fired at the last minute and left San Lv University, and he dreamed that the president would send someone to send him a professor's letter of appointment. After returning to Shanghai, he lost his job again. Sun Roujia asked him to work in his aunt's factory. He shouted, "The lackeys of capitalism don't do it." This is why he just forgot that the former "father-in-law" manager Zhou was also a real capitalist.
"Anyone's choice of culture must first be restricted by culture." The complex cultural background formed his complex and contradictory life ideal and personality characteristics. Fang Hung-chien lived in the 1930s and 1940s, and only at the stage of China's cultural alternation between the old and the new did he study abroad. Influenced by modern western culture that respects individuality, values human values and encourages personal development, Fang Hung-chien's subjective consciousness has awakened and he has the ideal and desire to pursue a free life. However, under the shackles of China's powerful traditional cultural autocracy, his ideals and wishes failed. China's traditional culture emphasizes turning the external planning of society into the internal desire of individuals, so that people everywhere can restrain their behavior and alienate themselves with the moral standards of the masses, so as to maintain the stability of social order. The conflict between the old and new cultures and the eastern and western cultures is not only manifested in the external environment of Fang Hung-chien's life and the objective factors of his tragic life, but also accumulated and internalized in his heart, which directly constructed his "spiritual siege". Under the attack of these two cultures with completely different value orientations, Fang Hung-chien's opposing attitude towards life and dual personality-seriousness and banter, integrity and fragility.
(B) the social roots of Fang Hung-chien's tragedy
"Any tragic conflict is a reflection of realistic social contradictions under specific historical conditions."
First of all, the hypocrisy, ugliness and absurdity of the real world are the important reasons for his tragedy.
Fang Hung-chien lived in a semi-colonial society in China, feudalism and capitalism, traditional culture and foreign culture, aggression and anti-aggression ... China was involved in the whirlpool of the times.
Secondly, China's traditional survival structure-the intrigue within the family system and the sense of alienation between people-is also an important reason for Fang Hung-chien's tragedy.
In China's traditional life rules, "people" can only be embodied and confirmed in social relations, and everyone's own value and significance are reflected in the corresponding relationship with others. The success or failure of establishing a relationship means the success or failure of your pursuit. And Fang Hung-chien's personality just determines his intimacy with these relationships, thus forming the social root of Fang Hung-chien's tragedy.
Fortress Besieged was published on 1947, and its title is of great significance to the work. On the surface, the word "besieged city" means the dialogue description in the novel. It compares marriage to a "trapped castle", which is conceived by unmarried people and married people. It reveals people's complex mentality in love and marriage, and it is also a mockery of the relationship between husband and wife in interpersonal relationships. However, the whole novel is far deeper and wider than the above meaning, and the author extends this mentality tendency to everything in life, including career, life wishes and so on. The center of the novel is that the protagonist goes in and out of several besieged cities of career, love and family, and the result is repeated defeats, which symbolizes the dilemma of "an entrance that can't be entered, a place that can't be visited" at that time, and reflects the life and mentality of the upper-class intellectuals during the Anti-Japanese War, which has strong social significance and profound philosophy of life.