How to comment on novels

In short, comment on the characters, plot structure, rhetoric, theme and environment of the novel.

Novel appreciation method

An important feature of novel art is to create vivid and touching characters. To learn and appreciate novels, we must first learn to analyze the character characteristics of characters and the means and methods to shape their characters. Of course, first of all, we should make clear the three elements of novels and the common sense of the development stage of classical novels (China).

Novel is a literary genre that reflects real life by describing typical characters, typical social living environment and complete stories.

The three basic characteristics of the novel are: first, through the description of the appearance, dialogue, action and psychology of the characters, the characters are shaped and their characters or personalities are expressed; Second, there must be a certain story, through the careful description of social life, showing complex contradictions and conflicts, describing the occurrence, development, climax and ending of the story, and showing the changes of characters' personalities in the development of the plot; Third, by describing the specific social environment, we can express the historical background and social conditions of people and events, contrast people and show their personality characteristics. Therefore, the author always depicts the times through the characters in his works, and embodies his understanding of life. Only by understanding the characters can readers grasp the essence of life reflected in the works.

The novel has a unique artistic charm because of its concrete and touching typical characters.

A typical artistic image refers to a character image with a unique and distinct personality, which can reflect the essence of a certain society and has a certain * * *. That is the unity of individuality and * * *, such as Rykov, miser, Grandet, Sister Xianglin, Lao Shuan and other typical artistic images we have just learned.

There are many ways to create characters in novels, but they are generally not single. It can be described positively or set off horizontally; It can not only describe language and action directly, but also achieve the same goal through environment description and detail description.

Personality and behavior are unified, and what kind of personality determines what kind of behavior. So when we analyze characters, we should pay attention to their action descriptions. For example, "Grandet threw gold at his age" and so on. Only a miser can do it.

Language is also an important means to reveal the personality characteristics of characters. Because people with different personalities have their own unique and personalized language habits. Starting with the characters' language, we can grasp the characters' personality characteristics. For example, every word of Grandet can't be separated from money, possession and transaction, and the miser's personality characteristics are vividly displayed.

Psychological activity is the reappearance of the character's nature, and the description of appearance can also reflect the character's heart and reveal the character's personality, which should arouse our attention.

Novel is an art of time and space, where space mainly refers to the environment. Environment is a specific place to form a character and drive his actions. It includes natural environment and social environment.

Social environment is the social background of people's activities and events, that is, the characteristics of the times and social outlook. The environment determines and affects the character. At the same time, the characters' personalities also have a certain impact on the environment, such as Rykov's rule over the whole city. They are unified with each other. The natural environment refers to the time, place, season, climate and geographical characteristics of people's activities. It is often arranged to create an atmosphere and set off the interest, mood and psychology of the characters. Generally, it has the emotional color of the author and is regarded as a hint of the social environment. The scene of year-end blessing in Blessing and the description of station atmosphere in Mother.

It should be noted that the environment plays a reinforcing role in the embodiment of the role. In order to express the characters' rich and complicated personalities, the author often sets various environments for the characters to "stimulate" them, thus recording their behaviors and revealing their personalities. Finally, it needs to be mentioned that the human feelings of the world displayed by the environment are not only for shaping characters, but also have their own independent aesthetic value.

From reading stories to understanding characters.

The aesthetic characteristics and means of expression of novels determine that readers should follow unique appreciation laws and methods when appreciating novels. As a narrative style, the novel world consists of a character image, a plot event and an environmental scene. As a literary style that creates images by means of language, these series of images of novels are indirectly generated in the mind of the appreciator through imagination. The novelist describes the image of the novel in a word-for-word, orderly and personalized language. Readers of novels will read the words one by one, understand the language one by one, and reproduce the image described by the novel author in their own minds. Therefore, the first premise of novel appreciation is that the appreciator should have certain language literacy and language ability. He can know at least 2000 Chinese characters, and can reproduce a series of images described in the novel in his mind through image thinking according to the meanings of words and sentences, and connect a series of images in the novel into a complete story by causality.

This is a general intuitive feeling of novel stories under the comprehensive effect of language literacy and language ability. The development history of Chinese and western novels proves that the aesthetic function of "entertaining" novels is often realized through stories with strong readability and artistic appeal. The first step for readers with novel appreciation ability to enter the process of novel appreciation is to quickly grasp the basic outline and plot types of this novel by reading the written language of the novel as a whole.

The story of a novel is actually an orderly combination of things produced by characters' personalities, words and deeds. What kind of character and destiny, what kind of things and plots will be born in the novel. On the basis of understanding the synopsis and types of stories, novel connoisseurs should further grasp the characters and understand their personalities and destiny.

There are various types of novel characters in novel stories. Some novel characters clearly show certain personality profiles in their works, and what the author wrote in the story has been strictly selected and refined, which can vividly show the outstanding personality of a certain aspect of the characters. Quite a few short stories and mini-novels are written in this way. Some characters in novels show contradictory personality elements in their works, which summarizes the complex personality phenomena in life. Some characters in novels show complex personality systems in their works. The novel characters created by ordinary novellas are often such typical characters.

The fate of the novel characters described in the novel stories also has various experiences. Some characters in novels have experienced great disasters from prosperity to adversity. Some characters in novels go from adversity to prosperity, and sum up that beauty in life will eventually overcome ugliness. Some novel characters, such as the lion boy written in Zhang's Road to the Road, have "the struggle of the soul" in the short story Time and Space. From the decision to kill to the decision not to kill, in just over 20 minutes, his life consciousness changed dramatically. Some novel characters are like Nie Hualing's "Shan Shan, where are you?" Like Shanshan, in 15, pure beauty has turned into vulgar ugliness. In the long course of life, the appearance and personality of the characters have shown a "qualitative gradual change".

Both the character characteristics and the historical fate of the characters often reflect the author's aesthetic perception and evaluation of life. Fiction writers often convey their subjective feelings about the characters and the themes they want to establish through vivid characters and tortuous characters' fates. Therefore, to appreciate novels according to law means to appreciate the characters in the novels while appreciating the stories.

From appreciating the details to grasping the plot

After the first overall reading mentioned above, novel appreciation can enter the second link-"local anatomy". When the novel reader begins to read the novel for the second time, his aesthetic attention can first be placed on roughly distinguishing the plot units of the novel. When carefully tasting and analyzing each plot unit, his artistic sensibility can be concentrated on the details of the screenwriter of each plot unit. As far as novel creation is concerned, the most basic means of expression for a writer to vividly depict a novel character is to select and refine some high-quality details of the writer. The basic reason for the generalization and conceptualization of the characters in the novel is that the writer has not mastered and refined many vivid and typical details about the characters. When people talk about those well-known typical figures in the history of novels, they often think of several details that reflect his personality characteristics. The emergence of novel style, the most fundamental difference between novel and other literary styles lies in the narrative and description of novel details. Therefore, when the novel appreciation enters the "local anatomy", we should appreciate the wonderful details of the work, appreciate the high quality and vividness of the writer's details, extract such rich and expressive details, and reproduce them with such exquisite artistic expression methods to surprise the writer.

How to appreciate the details of the author of the novel? Readers of novels can quickly understand that this detail reflects the "behavior content" of the characters according to the action content and external form of this detail. But readers' appreciation of the details of the novel must not stay at this superficial first level. High-quality writing details will generally show a person's personality characteristics in his "behavior". People with different personalities will do the same thing in different ways. Readers of novels should see the different "behaviors" of the characters from the details of this writer, so as to grasp the unique personality characteristics of the characters.

From the point of view of novel creation, connecting a series of details constitutes an organic plot chain, and the essence of novel plot is a series of artistic combinations that show various details of characters in a coherent and orderly manner. The plot of the novel has both objective content factors and subjective form factors. The reason why it is objective is that the plot details of the novel come from real life; It is said that it has subjective form factors, because the novelists are not arranged and combined according to the original form of real life, but reorganized according to the novelists' creative intentions and aesthetic ideals. The artistic time and space of the novel plot is reconstructed and transformed relative to the original life time and space. The characteristics of the connection and difference between the plot of the novel and real life have profoundly influenced the plot structure of the novel author and the appreciation of the plot by the novel readers.

Because the plot of the novel comes from real life, it requires that the plot designed by the novelist is true, just as Aristotle said, it is something that has happened or may happen in life. What happened can sum up many similar things in life; What may happen is in accordance with the inevitable law of life. Although this event did not happen, its nature and law determined that it might happen. If the life events reflected in the plot of the novel have happened in life, but they are all tributaries or illusions in life and cannot reflect the overall situation and the overall truth in life, readers will feel that the plot is untrue; If the events reflected in the plot of the novel are impossible to happen in life and go too far beyond real life to inspire readers to associate with their own lives, then readers will also think that the plot is false.

Because the plot of the novel also comes from the writer's subjective creation, under the reconstruction and transformation of the writer, the plot of the novel transcends real life in a condensed and novel form, which has formed a strong aesthetic stimulus for readers. Coincidence, misunderstanding, suspense, contrast, repetition and other plot techniques appear in the novel plot, all in order to express readers' familiar life in novel and unfamiliar forms and realize the aesthetic realm of the novel plot "both unexpected and reasonable".

How to appreciate the plot of a novel? How to appreciate the plot realm of "both true and novel" and "both unexpected and reasonable"? First of all, look at the typicality of plot events in novels. The plot of the novel should be able to summarize the content of daily life, involving the essential content of human life and the deep psychological content of human nature, so as to stimulate the readers' aesthetic concern and association with this relevance and generality. Secondly, look at the wit of the novel plot combination form. Special attention should be paid to the witty thoughts and techniques, ingenious forms and strategies of novelists in combining novel events and novel details.

In order to form the sensitivity and accuracy of appreciating the plot of a novel, we can establish some plot models in our minds by learning some plot theories on the basis of appreciating a large number of plot phenomena of a novel. The plot of a novel has different patterns due to different types of novels. Story novels, character novels and psychological novels all have their own special narrative modes. Romance novels, martial arts novels, detective novels ... also have their own distinct structural models; Miniature novels, short stories and novels ... have their own stable stylistic patterns.

For example, when we appreciate the plots of mini-novels, short stories and novels respectively, we can disassemble and combine them from their most stylistic plot patterns. Miniature novels are short in length, and pay more attention to creating unexpected endings at the end of the plot, which gives readers a reading shock. In order to produce this plot effect, novelists often adopt a mode of "releasing suspense and turning" to combine misunderstanding and suspense. The artistic time and space of short stories are broader than that of mini-novels, but short stories do not have the advantage of reflecting the longitudinal profile of life in an all-round way like novels. The conception of short stories often reflects life and expresses the theme tactfully by reconstructing new artistic time and space. So the "time-space staggered mode" of short stories came into being. "Shan, where are you, Nie Hualing? Xin Li, the leading actor, wants to meet his first love girlfriend 15. The work only wrote an incident fragment of Xin Li on the bus to Jilin Road. However, in this "cross-sectional" narrative, the writer takes Xin Li's eyes and mind as clues, and keeps cutting into some memories of Xin Li's life before 15, until the abrupt ending of "reality-past-reality-"is formed, which makes us feel that life has remolded people mercilessly and experienced the disillusionment of ideals and beauty in secular life. Using new forms and unfamiliar artistic time and space to express the writer's ideas and aesthetic interests tactfully is one of the reasons for the formation of short story plot patterns such as "time and space staggered"

The novel has a "single-line plot mode" represented by Don Quixote; There is a "two-line plot model" based on Anna karenin; There is an "orange petal model" based on Liu's Bell and Drum Tower ... The novel should truly, comprehensively and artistically reflect the vertical life, and its plot model is mainly constructed to summarize the three-dimensional vertical life in depth and thickness. In order to achieve this artistic goal, both traditional novels and contemporary novels are exploring a novel plot mode with artistic vitality-a "beaded mode" that integrates stereo and linearity. The classic novel Water Margin tells the story of 108 generals, and almost everyone has a tortuous, touching and even thrilling legend. The work uses several chapters to write a person thoroughly. In these chapters, the horizontal, vertical, reality and history of life are fully spread out, forming an independent story with this character as the core. The independent story of each character is like a complete bead. Then these beads connect them with an artistic clue. The whole narrative is linear, but the life of the characters displayed by each bead is three-dimensional. This is the "beaded model" which combines three-dimensional and linear. Because of its special artistic advantages and functions, this long story model still has strong artistic vitality today.

If we appreciate novels from these plot patterns, we will find that the development of Chinese and foreign novel art has regular phenomena, and we will have a sharper appreciation consciousness for different themes and different types of novel works, which will effectively improve the appreciation level of novel style.

From analyzing themes to appreciating skills.

In the second stage of novel appreciation-"local anatomy"-while mastering the content of characters and the basic means and methods of describing them, we should start a work of interpretation and analysis: through the specific materials (details and plots) of characters and descriptions, we can understand and appreciate the theme given to characters and stories by the author, that is, understand the artistic connotation behind the characters. Literary theme is the rational understanding of life extracted by literary writers in their creative themes, and it is the ideological significance summarized from the specific content of works description. The theme of the novel is the author's understanding and understanding of life when describing and narrating the characters' character and destiny.

Novelists are intentional and witty about the combination of details and plots. What details he combines into a plot chain in an orderly way, and what things that have no time and space are connected, are completely restricted by his creative intention and the theme expressed in his works. This kind of intentional and witty combination of the author of the novel makes a causal relationship between details and events. When readers grasp the causal details and events, they can see the author's understanding and understanding of life events. When we appreciate Shen Hong's award-winning novel Out of the Desert, we will find an interesting phenomenon-Professor Zhao, the character whom the author wants to positively affirm and praise, does not appear. In fact, the work describes two things: one is bright and the other is dark. On the surface, it describes that the protagonist "I" and three lost explorers are determined not to use the last pot of water, and they will not walk out of the desert until dusk to find an oasis. Another thing is that there is no positive narrative. Only through the two exclamations of "I" can readers know that when the expedition got lost, the oldest professor Zhao fell first, but before he died, Professor Zhao told "I" the truth that there was not a drop of water, and he wanted "I" to regard this basin of sand as the illusion of water until the end. When these two things, whether explicit or implicit, are combined and linked, readers will find the causal relationship between them-Professor Zhao's scheme of taking sand as water during his lifetime saved the whole expedition. This detail also strongly depicts Professor Zhao's broad-minded, witty and calm character at the expense of characters. This causal story actually sums up a truth of life-in any adversity, people should stick to their beliefs and spirit, without which they can't overcome despair. Only by reading such themes from such stories and characters can we really appreciate novels.

The theme of the novel is implied in the causal plot and the description of the characters. This rational understanding of life events and characters' fate is directly related to the writer's subjective thoughts and intentions, which profoundly affects the formation of the novel theme. However, the theme of the novel is not directly equivalent to the writer's creative intention. There is a complex relationship between the two, which is both related and different. Sometimes, the theme of the novel artistically conveys the writer's subjective intention, which makes them basically consistent. Sometimes, the theme of the novel does not convey the author's subjective intention artistically or completely, so it can be said that the theme of the novel is less than the subjective intention. Sometimes, because the characters in the novel are vivid and the events are thorough, the characters and events in the novel develop according to their own life logic and have their own artistic life, revealing some connotations that even the writer himself is not aware of, so it can be said that the theme of the novel is greater than the subjective intention. The relationship between the novel theme and the writer's creative intention is both related and different, which proves that the novel theme packaging contains two components: "the image is objective" and "the writer is subjective"; The artistic level of novel writers is uneven when expressing their subjective intentions, which makes novel readers have various complicated situations when appreciating the theme of the novel.

When the appreciation ability of novel readers is not strong, and the themes of excellent novel works are rich and vague, novel readers can only understand part of the theme of the novel and can't reach a high-level appreciation level. Sometimes even the theme of the novel can't be understood correctly, which leads to a completely wrong interpretation. When readers' appreciation of novels is relatively strong, and the theme connotation of excellent novels is relatively rich and vague, the appreciation of novel themes may be surpassed and promoted. The readers of the novel not only understand the subjective intention of the novel author in the novel characters and plots, but also discover and feel the objective connotation that the novel author didn't realize when the novel image gained artistic life. The subjective and objective thoughts and plot ideas of the characters in the novel are understood and grasped by the readers of the novel. In this case, a clever writer who knows the law of novel appreciation will fully understand and highly evaluate this unexpected and surprising new discovery and knowledge of novel readers.

Appreciating the advanced realm of the novel theme is to grasp the theme of the novel. The repetition of the same theme in a novel writer's works forms the "novel motif" in literature and art, which is the result of typological analysis and appreciation of the novel theme. We can appreciate the theme of a novel at a higher level by discovering and savoring the "novel motif" that appeared with a novel writer or novel creation in a certain era, and further comparing and analyzing the summarized "novel motif" with comparable novels abroad.

When we have finished appreciating the whole reading and partial anatomy of a novel, we need to do another whole reading of the novel from beginning to end. This holistic reading can further consolidate the established characters, confirm my feelings and understanding of the theme of the work, and deepen my understanding of the details and plots. Among these appreciation books, the deepening of novel appreciation is to further appreciate the distinctive artistic skills of the works. This artistic observation of the novel is likely to be felt and recognized in the first overall reading and the second local anatomy. However, as an appreciation of the organic combination of the novel's ideology and artistry, we need to consolidate and strengthen the experience and understanding of the novel's artistry while verifying and interpreting the novel's ideology. Therefore, the third link of novel appreciation-an important content of the second overall reading is to appreciate and appreciate the artistic skills of excellent novels. The artistic skill of novel refers to a skill formed by the author's repeated skillful use of skills in shaping characters, constructing plot patterns and refining narrative language. Artistic skills serve to express the content (characters, plot and environment) of the novel. The artistic skills of the novel involve a wide range of contents. Here, several main skills of characterization and plot design are mainly introduced.

Writing skills of front extension and side foil. There are two basic skills in creating characters in novels-making characters appear and keeping them from appearing. Once the novel characters appear in the works, the novel writers should concentrate their artistic strength on writing the living characters. However, the length of the novel is always limited, while the material describing the characters in the novel is infinite. To solve this contradiction artistically in novel creation, the novel writer's skills are as follows: first, he first determines the characteristics of the characters (personality, behavior, language, thought, etc.). ) to show it in his works, and then select and refine several materials (details) to repeatedly show this feature of the characters. These materials can be "heterogeneous" details with different time and space but the same connotation. The characteristics of a character are repeatedly expressed by two or more homogeneous and heterogeneous materials, which constitutes the artistic effect of narrative delay (or narrative repetition).

Sometimes, a writer wants a positive person not to let him go out. The space vacated in the novel is mainly used to write the details of secondary characters or related items, the spiritual shock and fate turning point of secondary characters under the influence of the main characters' behavior, and the influence and role left by the main characters in the details of items. This is the writing skill of profiling and imaginary writing. Yu Debei's award-winning work "Hangzhou Road 10" mainly describes an unemployed young man "I" who played a joke on life because of doing nothing-writing down his pain and despair and sending it to an imaginary address and figure-Yuan Xiaoxue at Hangzhou Road 10. Who knows that he really received a letter from Yuan Xiaoxue at Hangzhou Road 10, encouraging him to face life bravely and change his situation and destiny. Moreover, he receives similar letters and books every month. When he changed his mind and went to Yuan Xiaoxue, he realized that Yuan Xiaoxue was a famous disabled psychologist Professor Luo Hansha. He has been suffering from bone cancer for more than two months. Before he died, he left a stack of letters for his wife to send to the unemployed young man once a month. Professor Luo, as a character whose works mainly depict other people's lives with his own fire, has never appeared in his works. The positive description of the work is the influence and transformation of Professor Luo's personality and mind on an unemployed youth. The motive force of the fate and personality changes of minor characters comes from the personality and morality of the main characters who have not appeared, and the aesthetic information contained in them is enough to activate the readers' artistic imagination. This is a very clever profiling technique.

Plot skills of many sharp turns and reverse falls. In the orderly combination and linear narration of the novel plot, in order to realize the legend of the novel plot, the novel author always wants to let the novel readers guess his next plot content and the ending of the story, so the mode of deliberately creating a sudden change of opposites between the two plots of the novel is favored by the novel author. When using this plot mode and technique, the author of the novel not only makes the plot of the novel turn sharply, but also makes the plot turn sharply several times in a row, making the plot direction of the novel turn sharply 180 degrees, then 180 degrees, and sometimes even several times. The protagonist "I" in Chen's award-winning novel The Flowing Flower Scarf is bored and desperate about life. With the encouragement and demonstration of the heroine Shen Ping, his life changed and he began to work hard. When "I" was admitted to the university to find Shen Pingping, who had been pestered by "I" for a year, the plot took an unexpected turn-Shen Ping himself entered the degenerate life that "I" tried every means to get rid of. The plot suddenly turns again, which profoundly enlightens the philosophy contained in their personality mutation.

Narrative contrast is also the most commonly used method in the design of novel plot model, but many novel writers skillfully use it as a contrast method to prevent falling. Fiction writers do not set a plot of contrast in their novels, but set more than two contrasts to interweave characters and events. The reading shock of O Henry's The Police and the Hymn comes from this double contrast. The protagonist deliberately violated the rules and wanted the police to put him in prison for the winter, but he failed several times in succession. When he finally heard the church bells and songs, he regretted it and was ready to turn over a new leaf, but the police arrested him. When you want to go to jail and fail repeatedly, but you don't want to go to jail and prepare to turn over a new leaf, you put him in jail-this is the contrast of the plot. Set up more than double the contrast skills, which greatly expands the capacity and philosophy of the plot and strengthens the readability and legend of the plot.

Jump out of the hole.

The characteristics and laws of literary appreciation tell us that there is aesthetic emotional communication between the subject and the object of appreciation. The subject imagines his own situation in the object of appreciation, projects his feelings on the object of appreciation, and imagines the object of appreciation in combination with his own experience, knowledge and accomplishment, so as to complete the creation of literary works together with the author. This is the real literary appreciation.

The life truth and artistic truth shown in the novel works make the novel readers first have a "reliable sense of reality" about the characters and events described in the novel works. In the process of reading the novel, he felt that the stories and characters described in the novel all happened in life, or might happen in life. If the novel readers feel that the novel works have neither real life nor artistic truth, but are full of false and distorted life, then it can be concluded that the trust and communication relationship between the appreciation subject and the appreciation object cannot be successfully established, and then the novel appreciation activity cannot be started.

When the novel reader's "authenticity recognition" of the novel works comes into being, the novel reader will form aesthetic attention to the story and characters in the process of reading the novel. He will pay attention to the development of the novel story, imagine the various situations of the characters in the novel, fully devote himself to his feelings, share joys and sorrows with the characters in the novel, and lament their fate. He may find his own shadow and his own life in the fate of the characters. He may contact his own experience and understanding of life, seek explanations and predictions for the characters, prove his explanations and predictions of the fate of the characters in the novels, and produce sincere reading pleasure and aesthetic pleasure. This kind of reading pleasure and aesthetic pleasure are reversed, which makes the novel readers ponder, experience and appreciate the novel works repeatedly. If the readers of the novel don't put their feelings into the process of appreciation, then the appreciation of the novel can only stay at the stage of understanding the meaning and sentences, and the readers' active imagination can't be activated, so the appreciation of the novel doesn't really begin.

In the novel appreciation activities, if the appreciator doesn't put his feelings into it, it will be difficult to have emotional communication and emotional singing with the object of appreciation. However, if you put too much emotion into it, you will go in the wrong direction. That is, you can jump into the object of appreciation, put your feelings into it and even hum with the object of appreciation, and at the same time, you can clearly jump out of the emotion of appreciation and make a rational analysis of the process and result of appreciation. This is a complete novel appreciation that conforms to the law of appreciation.

Rational analysis of how to operate "jumping out" After the novel readers "identify the authenticity" of the novel works, they "read the whole". The next "local anatomy" is that this complete novel world full of artistic life is invented by the writer and the result of the writer's subjective transformation of objective life. It is necessary for novel readers to calmly analyze the following contents without * * * *: What kind of characters did the novel author create? What kind of philosophy and life details does this character's character and destiny summarize? Does he have typical significance in real life and novel history? What means and techniques did the novelist use to describe this character? Is there anything new in this method and technique? What is the connection and difference with traditional means and technologies? The same content can also ask about the plot and details, the story and the environment. With the intervention of these rational analysis, real novel appreciation will appear, and readers can accurately grasp the aesthetic value and artistic character of novel works through calm analysis and comparison.