How does Lao She's Camel Xiangzi reveal the destruction of urban civilization on human nature?

This work mainly tells the story of moral degeneration and spiritual corrosion caused by the opposition between a simple farmer from the countryside and modern urban civilization. Lao She's early humor and antics were replaced by the "sadness" of the May 4th New Literature.

(1) Xiangzi came out of the countryside, with the simplicity and strength of the countryside, a strong sense of morality and ideals.

① I admire myself very much and love myself. His confidence comes from his strong body, "his iron fan-like chest and straight back;" Twist a head to look at your shoulders, how wide and dignified! ..... Yes, it can undoubtedly be the best coachman, and he smiled to himself like a fool. " How beautiful Lao She wrote! People's confidence begins with knowing beauty. You fall in love with someone, first of all, because this person is beautiful, and only when you feel his beauty will you fundamentally affirm him. Xiangzi fundamentally affirmed himself, so Xiangzi is an individualist. Individualism means first affirming that he is beautiful, healthy and the center of the world. "Now, he walks freely, getting brighter and brighter. The sun gives the dew of grass a little golden light, and it also illuminates Xiangzi's eyebrows and warms his heart. ..... He lives in a universe with light and heat; He is happy, he wants to cheer! " Xiangzi is such a person who is full of ideals and sees himself very grand.

② Xiangzi has a clear pursuit and strict requirements for himself. His pursuit is to buy a car and live a stable and dignified life. To achieve this goal, he asked himself to make personal efforts, and he was not willing to beg humbly or use his wife's money. "Xiangzi has Xiangzi's ability, and he bought a car and married a wife with his own ability. This is fair and square!" The income that the car brought to him came second, and most importantly, Xiangzi wanted to get a little personal freedom: "In a world without justice, the poor maintained their personal freedom with cruelty, even if it was very small." This kind of freedom is the core of Xiangzi's pursuit, which can bring spiritual comfort and self-esteem satisfaction.

③ He is self-reliant and full of moral sense. After his illness, Xiangzi had to slow down when pulling a rickshaw. He felt ashamed, so he covered his face with a hat brim to avoid being recognized. Pulling a monthly package for Mr. Cao, he accidentally fell off a car and someone, and his face was covered with blood. Although it was not his fault, he felt ashamed to go on. When he first came to the city, he didn't rob the business and let the older and weaker drivers. His moral sense was brought from the countryside, and the simple countryside gave him a lot of traditional moral edification. On the one hand, this made Xiangzi look clean, upright, generous and generous, on the other hand, he viewed Tigress and his relationship with Tigress with feudal morality. According to the evaluation standard of the countryside, the girl he wanted to marry was "clean and clean, capable of washing and working", while Tigress was "shameless". Although she spent a happy evening with Xiangzi, Xiangzi was not only unable to appreciate and appreciate her, but was caught by remorse and disgust, feeling that she had "become a woman thief" and hated her for ruining all the cool energy she had brought from the countryside.

④ simple and honest, and repay kindness with kindness. He also longs for warmth, and whoever is good to him will be good to him. To repair the yard and water the flowers for Mr. Cao's family, he never waits for orders and runs errands for Si Liu. He is very happy.

(2) Xiangzi's weakness is selfishness and hardness. He is too strong, too concerned about himself, self-centered, only concerned about his own goals, but not about others. Therefore, he is warm-hearted to the people who are good to him, but he feels "deserved to fall" to the people he hates. In addition, he can't get along with other drivers. First, he is too strong to have their bad habits, which makes him out of place. Second, he despises others and has no sympathy. This selfishness is particularly obvious in treating Tigress. After dating Tigress, he put all the responsibility on Tigress and hated her for setting a trap for him. In fact, if he was not weak-willed and couldn't resist the temptation, how could that happen? It can be seen that Xiangzi does not understand others and only cares about his own interests. After the marriage, Tigress arranged a home for him anyway, but his heart was never touched and he had no warmth for Tigress.

This weakness of personality doomed him to be lonely, short-sighted and unable to cope with the oppression and corrosion of the environment. Tigress threatened him to get married. He wanted to talk to a friend, but he didn't have any friends. A lonely individualist can't support himself for long when he is in opposition to the whole environment. The only way is to degenerate with him and become a "ghost of individualism". This weakness, to a certain extent, also reflects some weaknesses in China's national character. Lao She's criticism of this weakness is included in the general theme of Lao She's novel "Criticizing National Weakness".

(3) the disease of civilization in the city:

Lao She said that it is very important for him to write Camel Xiangzi to "observe what hell is like from the driver's inner state". A society where the city is corrupted by money, morality is degraded and desire is cross-flow is hell. Representatives: Si Liu, Tigress, Er Qiangzi and Minh Nguyen.

① I don't care about my family, I'm only interested in profit. Si Liu wanted Tigress not to get married for his own business. Tigress married a poor Xiangzi, but he didn't care. He sold the garage and enjoyed himself, regardless of his daughter's life or death. In the end, Tigress died because she had no money to go to the hospital. Liu Erqiang watched Joy as a prostitute to support a large family. He had the nerve to ask for money, not only asking for money, but also abusing Joy. Xiangzi was not greedy for money, and his pride was humiliated when he was told that he was buttering up Si Liu.

② I am ashamed of hard work, proud of getting something for nothing and enjoying my senses. Tigress laughed at Xiangzi for being stupid, and told him to learn from Si Liu and "make money by heart". Erqiangzi didn't want to pull a rickshaw, but only showed off his clothes and was poor and particular, and finally degenerated into a drunken dream. Tigress attaches great importance to enjoyment, and when she has money and luxury goods, she is very arrogant and consciously superior. Xiangzi was thrifty and looked down on lazy people.

In a word, money and desire are the soul of urban society. People in the city, from Si Liu to poor rickshaw pullers, to Er Hadron, from Tigress to Mrs. Xia, are all people who don't care about benevolence and morality, have no spiritual support and real dignity, only believe in money and blindly indulge in material desires. Mercenarism and materialism complement each other, because as long as money has no soul and no feelings, it has to indulge in materialism, and because it is addicted to materialism, it can't get real spiritual peace, so it has to continue to pursue money to gain a sense of security, just like Si Liu. On his birthday, he felt that his days were numbered, but he didn't have any spiritual protection at all, so he couldn't help feeling sad and lost his temper.

This doomed their selfishness. Xiangzi's selfishness has a bottom line, that is, it will not go beyond the benevolence and morality brought from the countryside. But their selfishness has no bottom line, and it is downright ruthless. They regard everyone except themselves as the object of use, including their own daughters. Tigress, who grew up in this environment, though she liked Xiangzi, regarded Xiangzi more as the object of use, thinking blindly about how to make Xiangzi bring her happiness better. Tigress didn't really understand Xiangzi's real thoughts, and she didn't want to understand them. She didn't allow Xiangzi to be free. She took him as a prey and wanted to control him, using both hard and soft methods. She also looked down on Xiangzi. She once regretted marrying him and losing Si Liu's property, but at the thought of being happy with Xiangzi, she was reluctant to leave. Her leaving or not leaving Xiangzi was the result of weighing the pros and cons, and she never really thought about Xiangzi. In daily life, she didn't understand Xiangzi either. In the scorching sun, she drove Xiangzi out to see Joy receiving guests. As a result, Xiangzi was caught in the sun and rain that day and became ill. When she was pregnant, she changed her ways to eat, and she ate as much as Xiangzi earned, for fear of mistreating herself.

(4) Xiangzi's depravity:

Xiangzi's own folk factors-simple memories from the countryside, can hardly resist the harm of urban civilization. That is still the cultural and moral tradition of the citizen class before it entered the process of modernity, so it is inevitable that he was abandoned by the wheel of social development.

In order to buy a car, I started to grab business and abandoned the moral concept of not competing with the weak.

I fell in love with Mr. Cao, and under the education of Zhang Ma (usurer), I gave up the idea of quitting my job and abandoned the idea of defending my reputation.

having an affair with Mrs. Xia has committed a very serious moral precept.

betray Minh Nguyen. The last sign of Xiangzi's depravity is that he betrayed his personality.

Camel Xiangzi profoundly reveals the harm of urban civilization to human nature, criticizes the weakness of national character, and the infiltration of modern humanistic ideology and values has laid the elegant style of Lao She's novels. For the early humorous story, his evaluation is not high. "I decided to put aside humor and write seriously."