The Nanjing Massacre From The Perspective Of Ordinary Victims

The historical tragedy of the Nanjing Massacre has been shown in many films and television works. The inhuman slaughter of the Chinese people by the Japanese imperialism has been deeply branded in every Chinese person's mind, and the mourning for this history has become a kind of collective memory and grief of the Chinese people. However, many films and television works document and describe this history not from the perspective of the ordinary people at the bottom of the society. The most affected victims of the war are always those innocent civilians at the bottom of the society. Undoubtedly their feelings truly reveal the harm of war on humanity. This group in the above-mentioned works is practically in the object position of being told and being narrated. There is the lack of the true and accurate convey of their inner feelings. So when the film Nanjing! Nanjing! (shown in the first half of 2009) triggered our thinking on the war and human nature in general, the novel In Memory of Musician Liang Xiao, created by Shanghai-born woman writer Xu Lan in the mid-1990s to commemorate the Nanjing Massacre, has its unique literary and historical significance.Compared with the works of similar subject, In Memory of Musician Liang Xiao avoids the extensive direct description of the holocaust, but presents it from the survivor's"personal"narrative approach, so that highlighting the harm on the ordinary people brought by the Japanese brutal killing from the humanistic position. The novel, rich in imagination, describes the scenes of the doomsday before and after the fall of Nanjing by using the way of contrast, and reveals the tragic fate of those ordinary citizens in the Nanjing massacre with exquisite details. It can be said that Xu Lan describes the major historical catastrophe from the narrative perspective of common citizen. She avoids the political concern or political thinking and perspective, but narrates the harm on the humanity of the ordinary people in this massacre from the humanistic position.The novel doesn't directly describe the confrontation between ourselves and the enemy, and the progress and scenes of the war when the Japanese Forces attacked Nanjing. Instead it directly uses the lonely and sensitive girl Liang Xiao as the entry point, with her whereabouts and thoughts as a clue to record what she saw, heard, thought and felt before the fall of Nanjing --"So we stand here, seeing Liang Xiao walking on the streets of Nanjing."-- This is the writing clue through the whole story. The existence of war serves only as a background, which proves its existence and continuation by the sound of artillery of the Japanese attacks in the distance. The description after the fall of Nanjing also uses the track of the survivor in the death block-- the girl Liang Xiao as the clue. By comparing before and after the fall of Nanjing, the novel describes how the Japanese Forces of Aggression turned the ancient and civilized Nanjing City into a dead city through cruel killing, and turned the noisy and bustling street into a bloody block where death spread. After the Japanese attacks, the prosperity of this ancient civilized city vanished like a dream -- Nanjing fell into the catastrophe and the world of hell.The devastation of the humanity and the human spirits is the essence of the fall of Nanjing. The most striking characteristic of In Memory of Musician Liang Xiao is that every character in it is described as an ordinary person in the world, so as to display the fate of the common citizens and the destruction of humanity in the Nanjing Massacre from the standpoint of humanity. Although Yue Liang and Shi Lai were only six years old, the Japanese invaders'ruthless slaughter made their vulnerable minds refuse to see and listen. Xu Lan expresses her painful grief over this injury in her plain narration. The father was an ordinary citizen in Nanjing. The difficulty of life had made his passion of life wither gradually. The psychological harm and the personality humiliation he suffered after the fall of Nanjing paved the way to his death. He died two months later after the fall of Nanjing. Through the image of"father", Xu Lan portrays the humiliating living conditions of the common citizens after the fall of Nanjing. Contrary to Liang Xiao's father who was an ordinary and unknown citizen of Nanjing, Dr. Li was a very famous intellectual with superb medical skill. He was a"remarkable"ordinary person. He had a high reputation among the citizens of Nanjing, but in the last days of Nanjing his fate was equally tragic. Those numerous deaths and incurable injuries brought him horror, despair and even the collapse of rationality, and finally he ended his life with a scalpel. The numerous refugees fell into panic and anxiety in the daily killings. Driven by hunger and hatred they killed each other. Little Auntie and Zhou Tianci, lovers in wartime, died in the revenge killings of the refugees. -- Originally they were the victims of war, but the"victims"killed the people from their own kind -- that is the human tragedy inherent in the Nanjing Massacre.In short, through her"personalized"presentation of scenes of the historical disaster in the Nanjing Massacre, and her depiction and characterization of the spiritual and mental states of the ordinary victims one by one, Xu Lan deeply and clearly presents in front of us the harm of humanity in the historical tragedy of the Nanjing Massacre, so as to reveal the antihuman essence of the Nanjing Massacre from the standpoint of humanity. This is not only a lament for the dead, but also a thorough revelation and accusation of the evil war-- the dead had gone, but the bloody lessons should become a permanent memory.