Don’t expect others to save you when you are lonely and helpless

On the growth sadness of Sun Guanglin, the protagonist of "Shouting in the Drizzle"

Abstract: Through the living environment and inner feelings of Sun Guanglin during his growth, it can be seen that the lonely and desolate existence The realm filled his growth with sadness. Sun Guanglin's biological father was a scoundrel, and he was lonely and could not get any warmth; what he experienced from the social reality was the law of the jungle, indifference, and the uncertainty of fate; due to the pale enlightenment in adolescence, he also suffered from physical agitation and uneasiness, which were all The factors that caused his growing sorrow. The serious absence of love, the unprecedented decline of the ethical system, and the complete bankruptcy of moral control pushed him into the abyss of fear and despair. He is powerless to grasp himself, and he cannot grasp it, but he must grasp it. He has no ability to protect himself, and he cannot gain the power to protect himself from family and friendship. Therefore, he can only tremble toward loneliness again and again, and then fall into deeper trembling in loneliness. Sun Guanglin's experience represents a certain disordered and crazy state of Chinese society in a specific era. People walk in the corners of reality in the most primitive way, and hurting and being hurt become the most dynamic elements in daily life. A young boy with nothing to do, his young mind is forced to bear repeated blows from the storms of reality and is isolated and helpless, arousing people to reflect on and save spiritual suffering.

Keywords: sadness, loneliness, uneasiness, fear, trembling

"Shouting in the Drizzle" is Yu Hua's first novel and is a typical coming-of-age novel. It uses the growth experience of Sun Guanglin, a young man from the south of the Yangtze River, as the main narrative line, showing the loneliness, confusion, pain and helplessness of people born in the 1960s in China during their growth. The passage of time and perseverance exudes a touch of sadness. The adult world shown in the eyes of innocent and confused teenagers is indifferent and hypocritical, thus forming an insurmountable barrier between teenagers and adults, growing into the first scar of teenagers, forming their fear, and destroying their understanding of life. Beautiful view. The desperate cry of the young man came from the drizzle, but no one listened. Perhaps, they simply were not capable of listening.

As the narrator and returner of the story, the protagonist Sun Guanglin has different experiences and his eyes record more fates, which makes him sensitive and confused. He had been adopted for five years, which gave him more life experiences, and all these experiences, whether they were directly related to him or not, were filled with fear and helplessness. Loneliness and loneliness were the constant themes before he went to college. Through Sun Guanglin's growth experience, you can always feel the faint bitterness and sadness floating behind the story, the helplessness in facing reality and destiny, the worry and anxiety of being unable to escape the torment of reality.

One of the sorrows: his biological father was a scoundrel, and he was lonely and longed for warmth

You cannot choose between your birth and your father. Sun Guanglin's father was a complete scoundrel - his grandfather lost his physical strength. Later, the father abused the grandfather; the mother lived with the widow while she was still alive; the daughter-in-law... A rogue father not only made Sun Guanglin live without self-esteem, but was also the initiator of his bitter growth. For example, his brother Sun Guangping chopped off his head with a sickle, and he went to the fields to tell his father. Before his father returned home, his elder brother Sun Guangping used a sickle to forcefully cut a gash in his younger brother Sun Guangming's face, creating the illusion that Sun Guanglin had chopped his younger brother and his elder brother had taught him a lesson. So Sun Guanglin was beaten violently by his father and watched by the children in the village. His father's indifference fulfilled his brother's sinful nature and cast a shadow on Sun Guanglin's understanding of life. It was the source of his frequent fear and trembling later on.

At the age of six, Sun Guanglin was adopted to Sundang and became the adopted son of Wang Liqiang, a cadre of the County Armed Forces Department. When the strange Wang Liqiang came to the south gate in military uniform to take him away, he showed blind optimism in his urge to escape. Because no one told him that he would face a new family and a new environment; no one told him how to choose his future enlightenment and growth. “Like a seedling that has been abandoned at will, it can only rely on itself to find weak water and nutrients, and survive alone and tenaciously” (1). What was left in his memory of the enlightenment of his entire life was pain, helplessness and fear. In the way of suffering, he carried the most bitter paleness and desolation of human enlightenment in the entire rural social ethics.

With the suicide of his stepfather and the departure of his stepmother, he once again fell into the fate of being abandoned. The twelve-year-old boy once again returned to his hometown of Nanmen in desperation.

When he returned to Nanmen, there was a fire at home. His father believed that he was the cause of the disaster. The alienation and estrangement continued from then on, which made him in a difficult situation at home. His brother also bullied him due to his father's influence. Lonely, he originally wanted to gain more safety through dissociation, but this intensified his distance from reality and was excluded from the entire family. The result of this kind of spiritual damage is fear and trembling, and an extremely sensitive and reserved personality.

From Nanmen to Sundang, and from Sundang to Nanmen, this short cycle, for Sun Guanglin, Nanmen's home became a kind of charity. Sun Guanglin felt that his father's indifference and hatred had inadvertently imposed a cruel punishment on himself. His hatred for his father and family developed, and escape became his goal. The family is a haven and the backbone of the family - the father is supposed to be the original enlightener and educator, and the essence of life is an active, lively and upward force that everyone actively realizes in some way. Own. However, in front of his scoundrel father, Sun Guanglin was no better than an object, always arousing his father's disgust. All his desires could not be released, and he was suppressed, restrained, and destroyed by all kinds of things, so that he became withered and depressed. As a result, a call for respect for life is about to come out. The way the vulgar brother Sun Guangming looked at the sun before his death is a symbol. Human beings are immortal, and the birth of life is an extraordinary event. Life comes in disorder and goes away in confusion. There may be no answers, but only arousal. I believe that people born in that era will feel the same, but to varying degrees.

The psychological damage caused by a father with family rights is increasing day by day. Loneliness is the inevitable trend for sensitive teenagers. Sun Guanglin, who was born in 1959, was lonely until he became an adult. He even regarded the pond as his only companion. So he sat alone by the pond: smiling alone, crying alone, watching the disputes alone, watching the objects in the house being moved away, watching his own image in the water - his thin chin and tired eyes... free in Apart from everyone, he became a complete bystander and outsider. Even for his younger brother's funeral, he always stood at a distance and did not dare to attend due to inner barriers. Being lonely and neglected for a long time made him seem to no longer exist as a person in the village. Through his own eyes, he found that he had been completely forgotten. It can be said that loneliness was Sun Guanglin's state of existence before adulthood, and it was the fruit of an indifferent living environment.

Because of his loneliness, he is full of longing for warmth, but warmth is a castle in the air for him. He can only trek in the desert of despair as an outsider. It should be said that before the age of six, he and his parents were relatively close. After returning to his hometown from Sundang, he became helpless. The neighbor's two sons were riding their bicycles. Whether it was the children's shouts or the ringing of the bicycle bell, this situation made him envious. In anticipation, the warmth he understood came in a special way: after he had a fever, he put his palm on his forehead, but what he experienced was a kind and touching touch. After his condition improved, he harbored a child's attachment to adults. I often stay on my way home from get off work, watching him coming from a distance, imagining saying those kind words to him, looking forward to touching his forehead with my broad palm again. However, I never paid attention to him. I walked past him in a hurry, and occasionally looked at him like a stranger. Sun Guanglin's desire for tenderness failed, and it was already after adoption that he was touched again.

Stepmother Li Xiuying tested him with five cents, and he passed the test and handed the money to his stepmother. She praised Sun Guanglin in a touching tone. As you can imagine, it was just a few words of affirmation or praise, but for Sun Guanglin, her praise with too many complimentary words made Sun Guanglin so excited that he almost cried. This trust became the source of his self-confidence after being hit.

The more rogue biological father, stepfather Wang Liqiang, also showed him tenderness: his stepfather beat him and went on a hunger strike behind his back to eat. So, we saw Sun Guanglin's body swaying gently on his stepfather's back, and the self-esteem that was still so strong in the early morning was replaced by a kind of attachment. What he felt as he rested his face on his stepfather's shoulder was the excitement of being protected. His stepfather, who had lived with Mr. Sun Guanglin for five years and loved him like a real father and beat and scolded him, was more like his father than his biological father. Because of this, Wang Liqiang's death caused Sun Guanglin's long and lasting sadness - from then on, his father's love was no longer there.

For Sun Guanglin, who was born in 1959, loneliness was his keynote before he became an adult. The pond became his only companion.

Sun Guanglin longs for warmth, but he doesn't understand what warmth is. He thinks those touching "points" are warmth. The tender glance just proves its extreme rarity and preciousness, but a flicker of warmth cannot compete with the cold reality.

Through Sun Guanglin’s memories and confessions, it is based on a feeling and understanding of life that integrates history and reality, spirit and existence, examination of human nature and search for warmth. The questioning of the essence of existence turned into a cry of despair. Only simple and sincere care and love between people can help wandering souls find a home to return to.

Sadness 2: Suffering from physiological agitation and uneasiness

Sun Guanglin became a middle school student. A young man who is in the turmoil of adolescence will inevitably have a longing for love. With the natural growth of the body and the crazy torture of desire instinct, normal physiological enlightenment is completely blank. "The result is that the instinctive expansion of desire and the so-called norms begin to confront each other in the heart. In this confrontation" (2), Sun Guanglin has to suffer from fear on the one hand, and on the other hand, he continues to have doubts about women. Sweet fantasy. He confessed to himself and continued to flirt with the body of the opposite sex. This behavior not only brought him a "trembling" instinctive catharsis, but also brought him inexplicable fear, and he fell into extremely terrifying physical tension. The comfort of the night is always very short-lived, followed by panic, confusion and pain, and the growth of the body is always carried out with a pale face. Sun Guanglin has a crush on female classmate Cao Li: her face is incomparably beautiful, her smile makes "me" feel extremely sweet, and her voice makes "me" excited. She became "my" imaginary companion in the night. No one explained this phenomenon and psychology to him, and no one gave him guidance or help, so he felt that this was a crime he committed in the dark. During the day, he became frightened when he saw Cao Li who had been "hurt" by him. You can imagine Sun Guanglin's dilemma. He worried all day long that others would find out that he had done something shameful, which resulted in a mental allergy, which affected his self-confidence and almost lost his friendship. When he knew that the male classmate with dark hair was Cao Li's favorite, he pitied himself and thought that Cao Li had shattered his beautiful yearning.

Since there is no legitimate way to understand all this, the sense of mystery prompted him to see color pictures of naked opposite sexes at his friend Su Yu's house, which made him fall from illusory beauty to reality. Not only that, when Su Yu was sent to a labor camp for "molesting", he was filled with hatred and felt that everything around him had become so evil and infuriating. Cao Li's love for mature men made her fall into the arms of her music teacher. After the affair was revealed, the music teacher was sent to prison, only to be released five years later and sent to a rural middle school. The elegant music teacher was once Sun Guanglin's idol. Later, when Sun Guanglin saw the music teacher again, aging had replaced the music teacher's former suaveness, and his gray hair was blowing randomly in the cold wind.

This is a time when puberty is just waiting to bloom. In an era without physical education, they have no psychological preparation for adolescence. Suddenly facing their grown-up self, they are in constant panic because of the emergence of physiological characteristics. Su Yu's instinctive turmoil and adventure in adolescence, and the encounter between the music teacher and Cao Li, show that in the special historical situation, there is a serious lack of love and the unprecedented decline of the ethical system. Adolescence can only show confusion, anxiety and fear, instead of pain and sadness. Instead of mystery, romance and reverie, the poetic years remain pale and fearful in adulthood, which is the price of the lack of civilization.

Sadness 3: The real society is full of indifference, the law of the jungle and the uncertainty of fate

Nanmen and Sundang are the "society" in Sun Guanglin's eyes. What he felt was the law of the jungle, indifference and the uncertainty of fate, which led to his confusion and sadness. For example, when he returned to Nanmen and was in an embarrassing situation, his father quarreled with the strong Wang Yuejin brothers over the issue of private land. The quarrel turned into violence, and his parents were beaten to a terrible state. But after the desperate brother Sun Guangping slashed at Wang Yuejin with a kitchen knife, the Wang brothers were defeated. The elder brother became a universal hero. Sun Guanglin was considered by the villagers and family to be the worst person in the world because he did not participate in the dispute. The ignorant Sun Guanglin may have stayed away out of instinct, but because of this he was completely rejected by people and became a bad guy. This deepened the gap between him and reality and was excluded from the entire family. The law of the jungle replaced reason and justice, distorted his judgment and deepened his pain.

Feng Yuqing, a young and beautiful girl in the village, represents Sun Guanglin's longing.

After being raped by Wang Yuejin, she hugged Wang Yuejin's waist tightly with everyone watching, her eyes full of pleading and distress. The purpose of begging was just to ask Wang Yuejin to accompany her for a checkup. Faced with Wang Yuejin's insults and teasing, the onlookers were just curious but not sympathetic. This confrontation and indifference dealt Sun Guanglin a heavy blow - justice was not given sympathy, support or justice. At Wang Yuejin's wedding, because the bride was not Feng Yuqing, Sun Guanglin's heart was overflowing with the joy of being free from defilement. But when he saw Feng's embarrassment, an unspeakable sadness arose spontaneously - Feng Yuqing could no longer be the same as before. . Later, Sun Guanglin thought that her running away was to escape from the clutches of the devil and live another peaceful life. However, the fickleness of fate caused Feng Yuqing, who ran away in anger, to become a prostitute step by step, which did not change her tragic fate. Not only that, after Feng Yuqing was sent to a labor camp, her son, Lulu, became a street child. Sun Guanglin saw Feng Yuqing again and saw her face that had been ravaged by time. Her eyes that had lost their youth were like dark dust floating. Sun Guanglin's sadness was not that Feng had forgotten him, but that he witnessed for the first time the decay of beauty and the cruelty of life. After that, Sun Guanglin's memory of her was also covered with thick dust. Perhaps it was a similar fate, perhaps driven by loneliness, or because Feng Yuqing once represented his vision, he and Lulu became good friends, but the friendship ended when Sun Guanglin was forced to return to the South Gate. Beauty was eaten away, and the cloud of destruction became more and more heavy on Sun Guanglin's soul.

Even on campus, he was still confused and uneasy. Zhang Qinghai, a primary school teacher, is hypocritical and cold-blooded. When a slogan with bad words about him appeared on campus, he based on his arbitrary judgment that the person who wrote the slogan was Sun Guanglin, so he and Teacher Lin used the teacher's authority to start mental torture against Sun Guanglin: Seducing, attacking, yelling, banging on the table, staring, locked in a small room. Here, the teacher's face is not loving and wise, but hypocritical and insidious, impersonal and devoid of sympathy, regardless of Sun Guanglin's ability to bear and his true feelings. Their temptations, conspiratorial praises and smiles made Sun Guanglin gradually feel that admitting his mistake after doing something wrong was more praiseworthy than not doing something wrong, so Sun Guanglin admitted it out of thin air with excitement and expectation. The casual trampling of morality, fairness, and justice deepened Sun Guanglin's fear and sadness. It was the teacher who confused right and wrong. Sun Guanglin's soul went from confusion to wandering, with no place to turn.

The domineering and carefree, weak man did not change his tragic fate in the end. Living in such a disorderly and tragic environment, Sun Guanglin seemed to feel that fate was playing tricks on him. Not only did the environmental forces make it impossible to perfect his character, but it intensified his fear and avoidance. Such a mental state makes him ignore himself. If he uses a distorted perspective to understand life, he will definitely get a distorted understanding of life. It was all puzzling, yet so logical at that time.

The ubiquitous sadness spreads across towns and villages, among farmers’ families, intellectuals’ families and military families. Not only Sun Guanglin, but also Sun Guangping, Sun Guangming, Su Yu, Su Hang, Liu Xiaoqing and other generations are struggling to grow up in a state of disorder. In special historical circumstances, the unprecedented lack of humane care and the serious loss of social ethics and moral dignity have inevitably reduced people to a tragic existence. For example: Su Yu who was sentenced to a labor camp because of his instinctive turmoil and adventure in adolescence, Feng Yuqing who became a prostitute, wandering Lulu, Wang Liqiang who committed suicide, a down-and-out music teacher, or become an out-and-out rural scoundrel like Sun Guangcai , are all typical examples of tragedy. This novel is more like a spiritual history of a young man's growth. What it leaves behind are painful memories that cannot be dismissed, sufferings that a young man cannot bear in his life, helplessness, helplessness, hopelessness and perseverance. His heart trembled. "Both the material life and the spiritual life are dull, there is no hope to say. Intimidation, intimidation, and insults are the indispensable spiritual lubricants to maintain this family." (3) The ubiquitous sadness engulfed Sun Guanglin's young mind. , manifested as fear and trembling.

Although Yu Hua said that this is a book about memories, writing this novel is not a complete one. A writer's responsibility and feelings enable him to use a calm writing style to incorporate Sun Guanglin's personal growth experience into the fate of characters throughout the era, giving this work a grand realm and distinguishing "Crying in the Drizzle" from other coming-of-age novels and campus novels. , the significance of achieving the era is to reflect on the spiritual sufferings of the past and build a rational and harmonious present and future.

The pond that appears many times in the work is a witness to loneliness and a place to resolve loneliness. It carries Sun Guanglin’s sadness. When Sun Guanglin returned to his hometown as an adult, the pond of the past still existed. The sudden appearance of the pond caused Sun Guanglin to face another emotional attack. Here, the pond hints that he still should not forget his hometown or is grateful to his hometown, because his hometown has given him life; the pond hints that he should not forget the past, reminding him of the bitterness of the past, and reminding him to change his past life and give to others and even his future. With warmth and care for the children who do not belong to him, he awakens the indifferent hearts and numb nerves, and gives life a new look. The era of specific material and moral deprivation has passed, but there are still teenagers shouting in the drizzle, reminding us to pay attention to and respect life.

Notes: (1) Page 93 of "The Critical Biography of Yu Hua" (author Hong Zhigang, Zhengzhou University Press, 2005 edition)

(2) Page 103 of the same book

(3) Same as above, page 93

References:

"Modern Educational Thought" (May 2002 edition of Radio and Television University Press edited by Xing Yongfu)

"A Critical Biography of Yu Hua" (author Hong Zhigang, Zhengzhou University Press, 2005 edition)