Chinese Journal of Literary Criticism

No.1, 2019 

Portraying Beauty by Promoting the Upright and Suppressing the Crooked—A Construction of the Life Itself in Mo Yan’s Novels

(Abstract)

Wang Zhujie

Mo Yan’s novels show a strong desire for the ideal life itself as of natural, sound and prosperous. correspondently, narratives of “The Disabled” become a peculiar way of constructing  this kind of figures. The disabled, together with women as the another half of them and other related male characters, form an implicit comparison structure, which exhibit a sharp contrast with the healthy, strong, and brave characters. They are subordinate in the structure of the texts, portrayed only in the gaps of narration. The perspective of narration is relatively fixed, external and onedimension. Set to be symbols of an imprisoned life, the function of these images is to set off the bitterness of the fate of other characters. Therefore, when women start to rescue their bodies, or emancipate themselves, they also begin to challenge the traditional patriarchal order. The challenge is endowed with a justness that even traditional moral ethics would give tacit consent to, so in a sense, the texts achieve the construction of women and even life itself.