Being Clear And Perplexed--On The Misery Consciousness Of Xiao Hong

Xiao Hong lived in a time of misery, and the same with her life. We have no difficult finding her texts are filled with misery. Xiao Hong is one of the writers who have deeply explained misery. Xiao Hong's critique is fierce, which is different from Shen Congwen who avoided the ugly country; Xiao Hong was digging the source of nation's disease, misery in life and living, especially in life of women; she is different from Ding Ling whose texts went to be stories about heroes and legends; and she is unlike Zhang Ailing who watched Shanghai with some indifferent and selfish mood, Xiao Hong was in the land and called earnestly. Such is Xiao Hong's unique charm which should be an important point in the search about her. The search about Xiao Hong has now stepped out of the period of simply analyzing Xiao Hong with revolution idea and realism method, and is walking towards a real Xiao Honng. Here, this text hopes to do some devotion to the road of finding a real Xiao Hong by several aspects of analysis about her misery consciousness. Part 1: Showing of the Misery ConsciousnessXiao Hong didn't mainly worry about people's difficult in material life such as being short of cloth, food or house. Misery consciousness does not mean lacking material supply or bad in natural environment, but means a sort of deep feeling about misery which deprives from a heart in misery life, about a mood in spirit, and about the awareness and asking about misery including fight. Xiao Hong's view is towards the lowest layer of life and living----the nation's disease. In this view, three kinds of misery consciousness are depicted: Firstly, the life of so-called "people" is exactly of non-people, is the same as animal. People have no feeling of sympathy, love and friendship. Both the appearance and the truth of life of Characters in Xiao Hong's texts are just like animals, such as pig, horse and owl. Thus, here appears dissimilation: people are madly seeking material, even they think that feeding chicken is more important than raising children; sex is equal to force and passion, and life goes back to the nature of animal---- food and sex. Secondly, people can not control living and also ignore death. Without the press of death, people have no consciousness of seeking the value of living. Death has the biggest power in waking people to aware their living because the press can makes people to think again. However, Xiao Hong finds that people in this land has been used to not only the confused life but also the hasty death. They silently come and calmly die. The terror of death that it coldly "dragged a person to another world" brings about with Xiao Hong deep worry. Thirdly, women are especially sorrowful, they have no family and no love. To be a woman, a warm family and man's love are external subjects which can exactly show women's nature. Making efforts to compare the difference of status, money and treatment etc. between men and woman so as to acquire apparent equality is not fit for Xiao Hong. Her eyes are on the women nature: women are not real women, they are just sexual targets and tools of bearing and at last loses their beauty. Part 2: the Expressing of Misery Consciousness----the Warmth of Misery Consciousness Misery in Xiao Hong's texts appears without "misery", but with warmth, which is so seldom in modern Chinese literature.The warmth of misery consciousness has two aspects of effects:First of which is, it returns the truth of misery to people, which originates from two efforts: on one hand, women's special motion makes reader near to the misery at that time. On the other hand, the narration of warmth has jumped out of usual pattern of comprehension so as to show "the truth" hidden in common pattern.The second is that a kind of desolation permeates people's mind. Xiao Hong has broken with her country. Then, when she has acquired a new modern consciousness on an upper point, she goes back to criticize the country's fall and ignorance. This time, she do...