The Journey to the West's serious injury

The Journey to the West's hard injury

Text/Zhang Shouquan

In China, The Journey to the West is well-known to women and children and deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. On the one hand, he has successfully created characters with different personalities that are loved by the readers. On the other hand, this book can be regarded as a three-dimensional grand gathering of China's celestial world, demon world, mortal world, underworld, aquarium and other worlds, with many characters and huge scenes, and many gods and buddhas are loved by ordinary people. In addition, the karma advocated by Buddhism expressed in the book largely conforms to the logic that the disadvantaged groups firmly believe that justice will surely triumph over evil. Although The Journey to the West has the largest number of fans in Four Great Classical Novels, this book is also the one with the worst literature and artistry in Four Great Classical Novels. It is hard to read the original carefully.

First, the language narrative is wordy and repetitive.

The Journey to the West's book obviously leaves a serious trace of oral storytelling. In a considerable number of replies to the original book, after the incident, the parties will get used to telling the third party what they have just experienced in detail. For example, after the novel came out in water curtain cave for the first time, Wu Cheng'en spent some pen and ink to let the stone monkey explain what he had seen in the previous article to all the monkeys again. At the beginning of the sixth cycle, when Guanyin asked about the Jade Emperor's Flat Peach Club, the Jade Emperor's answer was still very detailed, and Wu Cheng'en still didn't summarize it in a few words here. All this, too numerous to mention. Dozens of repeated expressions make the plot of the book not compact enough and extremely protracted. In addition, there are more than a dozen places in the book where the Monkey King boasted to his opponents about his self-introduction jingle description from birth to making trouble in heaven and then embarking on the road to learn from the scriptures, ranging from 4 to 5 words. In fact, under the condition that readers know the Monkey King's identity, it is completely unnecessary to introduce it repeatedly in such a long and dry text. Although the above-mentioned repetition is inevitable in life, literary works are not simple copies of life after all, and require concise and vivid language. Key places should be cherished as gold, and readers can pass by with eclectic expressions on the premise that they are known.

second, there are frequent inconsistencies in the plot, and the traces of story fabrication are heavy

The novel originated from life but is higher than life. Please allow me to move out this outrageous theory again. Although the novel does not necessarily require the reappearance of life, the basic plot of the novel must be close to life, in line with human nature, without any traces of artificial carving. Although it is a novel, it also makes readers feel that this is our real life and human nature. Although there are many well-known scenes in The Journey to the West's book, if you read it carefully, many plots are inconsistent and cannot be justified.

The story of Tang Priest appeared. From the time his father Chen Guangrui won the top prize in the middle school until Jiang Liuer was eighteen years later, it was a big mistake in the thirteenth year of Zhenguan. On the question of Tang's monk's age, Wu Cheng'en deliberately carried out the mistake to the end, or in the thirteenth year of Zhenguan in the Tang Dynasty, the 18-year-old Tang's monk went to the Western Heaven to learn from the scriptures on the orders of Emperor Taizong. The Tang Priest was supposed to be thirty-two years old when he arrived at Bujin Temple in Tianzhu in the past fourteen years. However, when the 15-year-old monk in the temple asked about his age, Tang Priest replied, "Forty-five years have been wasted." This generation of Buddhist masters written by Wu Cheng'en can remember the boring Buddhist classics thoroughly, but he can't remember his age. It's a big joke.

Secondly, the description of a robe stolen by a bear monster in black wind mountain is somewhat puzzling. First, since Xiong Guai stole the cassock, he would never invite his friends to have a "Buddhist costume party" for the sake of confidentiality. Second, even if a "Buddhist costume party" is held, the elders of Jinchi in Guanyin Temple will not be invited to participate. After all, the cassock was stolen from Guanyin Temple. Is he really making fun of Elder Jinchi, or is he a little stupid? The way the bear monster shows off the stolen cassock is a bit outrageous.

Thirdly, there is a big loophole in the passage that Wukong and Bajie rescued the king of Wuji from the well in the thirty-eighth chapter "Babies ask their mothers to know whether evil is right or wrong, and Jin Mu sees falsehood and truth". First of all, they flew, but when they arrived at the gate and the imperial garden, there might be air defense facilities above the city and the imperial garden that prevented them from flying. They did not choose to fly directly into the city and the imperial garden, but jumped into the city, and Bajie built the gate of the imperial garden with a rake. Secondly, building the gate of the Imperial Garden with a rake will make a great noise. I don't know what the people in charge of the palace security in Wuji country are doing at this time, and the Monkey King, who is worried about the leak, doesn't seem to be worried about the discovery of the big hole in the Imperial Garden. After that, they rescued the king directly, instead of going over the wall and knocking on the door like they did when they came. Instead, Pig carried the dead king on his back, and the Monkey King "twisted the tactic, recited a spell, took a breath on the Xun ground, and when it blew away, it was a gust of wind, which took Pig out of the inner court of the palace and hid away from the city". There was no hesitation when I left. Fourth, in the thirty-fourth chapter of the novel, Jinjiao, the second king of Yinjiao sent a small demon, Bashan Tiger, and Yi Hailong invited the foster mother fox spirit, all of which were killed by the Monkey King. Jinjiao and Yinjiao knew about it, but then they still wrote that the Monkey King became dependent on Hailong to move around Jinjiao and Yinjiao, but Jinjiao and Yinjiao didn't notice it. The appearance of this contradiction is not known as the negligence of the Monkey King or the serious memory loss of Jinjiao and Yinjiao.

III. Similarity of Characters and Plots

As a long-form masterpiece with 1 chapters and 82, words, The Journey to the West inevitably has similarities in characterization and plot setting. First of all, the most obvious similarity is the first reaction of Tang Priest when he meets a monster, which seems to be a habitual action of Tang Priest. After the Tang Priest was arrested, Wukong turned into a bug and flew into the cave to spy. Every time, we would see a cowardly Tang Priest tied in the cave and crying in a monologue. The weak image of Tang Priest can be said to be the same timid image in every turn, and it only shows its extraordinary Buddhist realm, especially literary accomplishment, in rare cases. However, we are well aware that the highest state of Buddhism should be calm and thorough in life and death. The reactions of Tang Priest before he met the monster can not but make people doubt Tang Priest or disagree with Wu Cheng'en's shaping. Generally speaking, The Journey to the West's book introduces the course of four masters and apprentices and Bai Longma in getting rid of demons and catching monsters on the way to learn from the scriptures. Although monsters of different abilities, the final result is the same: that is, the grassroots monsters without any background are all killed by my old grandson with a stick, while those with backgrounds are basically taken back by their owners very reasonably and legally. In detail, Guanyin Bodhisattva's handling methods against Xiong Bi Jing and Maitreya's handling of Huang Mei monster are basically the same, both of which are made by the Monkey King to lure the monster to eat, so that Guanyin or Maitreya can seize the opportunity to conquer the monster. While questioning the author's single method to solve the problem, I have to laugh at the fact that Guanyin and Maitreya depend on the Monkey King's cooperation at the critical moment, and their means are no more than that!

Fourth, the description of the scene is not wonderful

Although The Journey to the West's book is also voluminous, with many characters and grand scenes, if you read it carefully, you will feel that many scenes are not wonderful except the plots of making a scene in heaven, stealing ginseng fruit, and fighting with the country late. Novelists tend to skim over the plot, without carefully processing the plot of faltering. Many scenes, such as the Lion Camel Country, have made their opponents too powerful. However, several processes of the Monkey King's struggle with these three demons have not changed much and are not attractive. Many cases of Tang Priest's arrest are generally near misses (after all, it is within the system for Tang Priest to learn Buddhist scriptures), and those who are arrested will naturally be rescued. Except for a few cases in which the Monkey King and others were killed, most of the solutions were to seek foreign aid after they could not be surrendered, so we saw a lot of routine demon-reducing processes. It can be seen that The Journey to the West's book is really similar to children's play house, with more twists and turns than highlights.

V. Learning from the Western Heaven, Test or Experiment

In The Journey to the West's book, the four men and women learned from the Buddhist scriptures all the way through eighty-one difficult, and finally achieved great success. In real life, Xuanzang will definitely not go through the hardships of this data. Buddhism places special emphasis on the number of hidden treasures and returning to the truth in 1999. In the ninety-eighth chapter of the original work, Guanyin mentioned to the Tathagata that the Tang Priest had learned the scriptures. "Today, it has been successful, and * * * is 14 years, which is 5,4 days, eight days less, which is not the number of hidden treasures. I hope you, my Lord, will give the holy monk an early return to the east and turn to the west. Within eight days, you must finish the collection and allow the disciples to return the gold. " In order to make up the so-called hidden number of 5,48 days, the schedule of Tang Priest's return to the eastern soil was delayed for eight days. In ninety-nine, it was mentioned that it was 8 difficulties for Tang Priest to retrieve the scriptures, but it was less difficult to return to the truth in nineteen ninety-nine. Therefore, donkey kong, who was escorting the disciples, artificially created another difficulty, that is, connecting them with the scriptures and falling to the ground, which led to the bridge of Tongtian River falling into the water to bask in the scriptures. In the thirty-fifth chapter, when the Monkey King surrendered to King Jinjiao and King Yinjiao, Grandfather Lao Yan came to ask for the treasure and explained, "Don't blame people wrongly. This was borrowed from me three times by the Bodhisattva at sea to send him here to deify demons. Let's see if your master and disciples really want to go west. " When the Great Sage heard this, he thought to himself, "This Bodhisattva is also old and lazy!" Learning from the scriptures is not only a test, but also an experiment made by the Tathagata Bodhisattva with four disciples. Along the way, many monsters are well-known. They are either the mounts of a bodhisattva or the gods in the sky, and even the Dapeng birds around the Tathagata have made waves on earth with the acquiescence of the Tathagata. Can the gods of Guanyin, the Tathagata, not know that all this is actually an experiment they deliberately did?