What is the final ending of Mei in Mao Dun's Rainbow?

"Rainbow" takes the heroine Mei as the main line of novel propaganda; The May 4th Movement of 19 19, the May 30th Massacre of 1925, the national division and the failure of the Northern Expedition of 1927, which emphasize the interaction between people and the times. This paper attempts to explain how Mao Dun reviewed, clarified and reflected on the revolutionary history from the May 4th Movement to1920s through the analysis of The Rainbow in the late 1920s. Because there are many similarities between Mao Dun's Rainbow and Ye Shengtao's Ni Huanzhi, in the process of analyzing the Rainbow, we will take Ni Huanzhi as a contrast to highlight the characteristics of Mao Dun. Secondly, the novel structure of Rainbow is based on the growth and social experience of the heroine Mei, which Mao Dun used to describe the spiritual course and transformation of new women from May 4th to May 30th. The first part of the novel describes Mei's feelings during her voyage from Sichuan to Shanghai. This passage is not only a description of the steep and magnificent natural scenery of Wuxia in the Yangtze River, but also a summary of Mei's outlook on life and basic attitude towards life through her feelings about the scenery: "She was like sailing in Wuxia in her previous life; I often see a cliff in front of me, and I suspect that there is no road, but I walk bravely to know that it is still a wide road, but after a short walk, there is a cliff in front of me, and I can't see any road. In retrospect, Yunshan was locked up again. The past is unbearable and the future is confusing and dangerous. She should seize the present and work hard. She is now a Christian. " [I] Mei is a new woman who was baptized in the May 4th Movement. With brave and strong will and determination, she broke free from the bondage of family and marriage and groped for the orientation and direction of life in the collision of social experience. She can't look back, but she hasn't seen the goal ahead, so she can only grasp the "present" and take a step on the road of life. Mao Dun once said that describing Wuxia Gorge is not only a realistic presentation of the steep scenery of the Three Gorges, but also a metaphor for Mei's life experience. When sailing through Kuimen, Mrs. Wen, a colleague, lamented that "all the way out of Sichuan is inconspicuous! Kuimen is heaven ",but Mei's feeling is:" Ah, this is Kuimen, this is the gate of Sichuan, and this is the gate of hell that separates Sichuan from the world! Since then, I have left the tortuous, narrow, dangerous and mysterious road and entered a vast, open and free world! " [ii] For Mrs. Wen, the boat trip was purely to enjoy the beautiful scenery of the Three Gorges, but for Mei, who stumbled on the road of life, the trip to the Three Gorges was a symbol of her life. She will stay away from the dangerous Sichuan (past), and she will devote herself to the vast world in the future with confidence and courage. From the second season to the seventh season, I began to flash back to the experience before Mei Suhang left Sichuan. The second to fifth sections describe that Mei bravely broke free from the shackles of traditional marriage under the influence of the May 4th Movement. This is the best part of the book. Mei is a student of Yizhou Girls' School. She grew up in a feudal family and received a new education because of her father's love. At the beginning of the second quarter, just one month after the May 4th Movement in Beijing, this wave of "patriotic movement" and "enlightenment movement" spread to Chengdu, Sichuan. When Mei followed her classmates in the patriotic movement to boycott Japanese goods in Shaocheng Park, she didn't feel too deeply about the so-called "patriotism", but at this time she was betrothed by her father to her aunt Liu Yuchun, who runs a Soviet goods store. On the contrary, the shame of being a "Soviet goods shop mistress who secretly sells Japanese goods" pushed her to the May 4th new trend of thought. Mao Dun used this arrangement to combine the concepts of "patriotism" and "personality liberation" during the May 4th Movement. In the process of reading New Youth, Mei pondered the truth of self-liberation and sought the solution to personal marriage problems. She bravely asked her childhood cousin Wei Yu to elope, but Wei Yu, who didn't resist, chickened out. Her desire to elope was dashed by her retreat, but when Mei rehearsed Ibsen's play Nora at school, her thoughts changed more dramatically. She worships Mrs. Linton in the play and thinks that she can save lives with sex without any difficulty, because she is a woman who forgets that she is a "woman". This concept deepened gradually, which made Mei agree to her father's engagement. She regards her marriage as a way to recover her father's debts and is determined to make Liu Yuchun her prisoner. After marriage, Mei once felt groggy, depressed and frightened, but she rekindled her will to "fight" because of Liu Yuchun's courtship. On the one hand, she tried to keep herself firm and brave as a student, not conquered by the stable life, her husband's flattering gentleness and desire for sexual desire, on the other hand, she tried to keep herself competitive with her husband and avoid becoming her husband's plaything. At the same time, she also took the initiative to ask her old classmates for help, hoping that when the time is right, she can escape from her family's cage. Until the fifth section of the novel, Mei went to Chongqing and passed her old lover on the way, but Liu Yuchun cleverly prevented Mei from reuniting with her, making Mei determined to leave her father and husband. At this time, Mei's independent, firm and brave personality as a new woman has fully matured. Mei's struggle in the process of getting rid of the shackles of family and marriage can be said to be the most wonderful part of Rainbow. Mao Dun's complete description of Mei's personality and delicate description of changes in mood and thoughts are the main reasons for his success, and Mao Dun's description of Liu Yuchun also enhanced the success of his description of Mei. Mao Dun did not portray Liu Yuchun as a villain, but only as a vulgar ordinary person. He is good at making money and whoring before and after marriage, which is not suitable for a woman like Mei who has received new education, idealism and spiritual satisfaction. However, his vulgarity comes from his growing environment. He was an orphan, born in poverty, and was sent to Suzhou as an apprentice. He suffered a lot and climbed to the boss's position step by step by his own efforts. Mao Dun gave Liu Yuchun a chance to directly refute himself by quoting the classics, showed his growing experience and inner feelings, and diluted the readers' ill feelings towards Liu Yuchun. At the same time, Liu Yuchun likes Mei very much. He courted Mei from a businessman's pragmatic point of view, and often bought many magazines with the word "new" for Mei to read (such as "New Wave" and "New Youth", but because he didn't understand the meaning of the new trend of thought at all, he often included "New Baseball Law" and "New Hygiene Theory", which made Mei laugh and cry). Such a husband makes it more difficult for Mei to pursue her ideal, because her opponent is not an autocratic oppressor. Therefore, she must overcome her lax and weak psychology in the face of her husband's hospitality and the stability of her life, and exercise her independent and brave character. Her enemy is actually not her husband, but her indolence. For Liu Yuchun's hospitality, Ms. Mei is more afraid of the high-handed means of anger and harsh voice. Especially when she saw that Liu Yuchun seemed to be sincere, not cajoling, her thoughts wandered in confusion. She felt that these were invisible and tough wires, gradually winding around her broken heart. But she can't get rid of these tough wires. She is a woman. She has the shortcomings of traditional women for thousands of years: she is easily moved by emotions. She clearly knows this shortcoming, but she can't get rid of it. She can't help it. What can she do? The psychological description of these heroines' self-growth and self-detachment can be said to be the most prominent and delicate part of this novel. In the fifth part of the novel, Mei escaped from the hotel where Liu Yuchun stayed, hid in her old friend Xu, and then moved to the primary school of Luzhou Normal School to teach. The sixth and seventh sections discuss Mei's social experience during her teaching in Luzhou. For Mei, she broke free from the cage of her family with the power of the May 4th Movement, but she lacked a clear goal in life: there was no clear goal of self-awareness, but there was a kind of power-I don't know when it occupied her whole heart, maybe it was the understanding of self-worth or the pursuit of the meaning of life, which made her always feel the reversal of the environment and let her forge ahead; I haven't rushed out yet, but it's still boring and gray-black. This is not only Mei's problem, but also Luzhou colleagues' problem, but they don't have Mei's powerful introspection ability. These colleagues did not focus on education, nor did they pursue the direction of life in social experience. Instead, I used the liberation of my personality to engage in love games and even make a farce, but I was worried about my reputation afterwards. Mei stands out among these narrow-minded, vulgar and boring teachers. Male colleagues pursue, please or covet her beauty, while female colleagues envy, envy or despise gossip because of her Excellence. She is indifferent, indifferent. For her, the real pain lies not only in the nonsense and attacks of colleagues, but also in the fact that she can't find the broad road to freedom of life. At the end of the seventh section, Mei left the primary school attached to Luzhou Normal School. After briefly explaining that Mei worked as a tutor in Mr. Hui's residence for two or three years, Mei finally embarked on the journey of leaving Sichuan. The novel ends with flashback, which starts from the second chapter and has as many as six chapters, and the chronological order is connected with the Three Gorges of Mei in the first chapter. Chapters 8 to 10 describe that after Mei arrived in Shanghai, she embarked on the road of social revolution under the influence of Liang (party member), and the novel ended with her participation in Mei's "May 30th" demonstration. At the beginning of the eighth chapter, it is pointed out that the time is1late October of 924 and the "Jiangsu-Zhejiang War". Mei, who came to the big city from distant Sichuan, was confused by the complexity of Shanghai, just as Liang said to her, "Shanghai is too complicated, and you will get lost." Mei became strong and brave in her life experience after the May 4th Movement. In the face of Shanghai's complicated social environment and Liang's "hero" who was completely loyal to herself, she involuntarily gave birth to a "second self" who lacked self-confidence and was indecisive. However, she is too strong to go back. She decided to "strut and overcome this new environment" as before. So she accepted Liang's arrangement, took part in the work of the Women's Federation, and came into contact with "Marxist" books during her cohabitation with Huang. These books, like the "new" books and newspapers during the May 4th Movement, opened a new world for Mei. Later, in contact and conversation with Liang, she gradually learned about China's social situation and Sino-foreign relations. When Mei was attracted by Liang, but Liang devoted herself to political activities, Mei decided: "I am also ready to be lovelorn, and I will give my body to my third lover-ism!" [4] So Mei devoted herself to the May 30th Movement. The Rainbow takes Mei's growth and ideological transformation from May 4th to May 30th as the main line of the novel's development, which shows Mei's transformation from accepting the May 4th new ideological trend to enlightenment-pursuing independent individuals through actions-getting through the blank depression during the ebb tide of May 4th-gradually understanding the social situation and participating in mass social movements. As Mao Dun said, "This is the first time I have written about the development of characters, which is a gradual development in accordance with the laws of life rather than a leap-forward development." Third, the image analysis of Mei Compared with Ni Huanzhi written by Ye Shengtao, Mei, as a woman, took a completely different path from Ni Huanzhi as a man. The biggest difference is that during the May 4th Movement, Ni Huanzhi had begun to gain a firm foothold in the society and realize her educational ideal, while Mei was still struggling with her family and wrestling with her husband, which highlighted that traditional concepts gave women more restrictions and constraints than men. During the May 4th Movement, Ni Huanzhi played the role of an "enlightener", putting all kinds of new ideas and viewpoints into practice through education, while Mei was an "enlightener", and gradually formed her own attitude towards herself, her family and her marriage in the process of accepting new ideas. For the new women during the May 4th Movement, the biggest task is to break the shackles of traditional family and marriage on women and find their own foothold in society and their own direction in life. Rainbow can be said to be the process that Mei solved these two problems as a May 4th woman. Through the test of these two major topics, Mei can be called a complete "individual". The first half of the novel focuses on Mei's efforts to get rid of the shackles of her parents' marriage and bravely travel alone in society under the influence of the May 4th movement. This part focuses on the establishment of Mei's personal subjective consciousness. In the second half of the novel, from Mei's teaching in Luzhou to Mei's participation in the May 30th Movement under the influence of party member Liang in Shanghai, this process is the process of Mei's search for the direction of life in the society. Under the arrangement of the writer, Mei's ultimate life trend is the road of collective mass movement. Like Ni Huanzhi, The Rainbow also shows the path of intellectuals from "individual" to "collective". The difference is that for Ye Shengtao, he is concerned about the dilemma of intellectuals falling into the fault between "individual" and "collective"; For Mao Dun, Mei's participation in the "collective" is not the loss of "individual", but the achievement of "individual". This difference comes from Mao Dun's demand for "times". When reading Ni Huanzhi, Mao Dun emphasized the epochal nature of the novel, and his epochal nature contained a strong revolutionary tendency: "How can the vitality of the people push the times in a new direction, in other words, how can history enter an inevitable new era?" As for the requirements of "revolution", The Rainbow can be said to be Mao Dun's work to reconstruct the "revolutionary history" since the May Fourth Movement with the historical view of the * * * production party in the late 1920s, while the protagonist Mei is the symbol of "revolutionary history" and plans the road of "revolutionary history" with her personal life course. Putting Mei into the pedigree of Mao Dun's Women of the Times, some scholars believe that from the beginning of Ms. Jing, Mrs. Fang, Sun Wuyang, Zhang Qiuliu and Xian Xian in Wild Rose to the end of Ms. Mei in Rainbow, from the time sequence of each novel creation, it all presents a certain curve movement and turns to "revolution". In other words, with the improvement of the author's description technology, their ideological temperament is more contemporary or social, and their subjective consciousness is more revolutionary. From the flashback structure of the novel, the characterization, the attitude towards the May 4th new trend of thought and the ending of the novel, we can see that Mei is "revolutionary". In order to highlight the "revolutionary" of The Rainbow, Ni Huanzhi, who is also an "educational novel", is still taken as the reference coordinate. First of all, in terms of flashback structure, although both novels turn the growth of the protagonist into a clue to the development of the novel, the same two novels both adopt some flashback techniques. In the first section, the image of "taking a boat" symbolizes the owner's just driving on the river of life. The novel begins with "the owner just embraces his dream to meet a new life": Ni Huanzhi arrives at a new school by the Wusong River in a low boat. Here we are, a new life begins! "In the second quarter, Ni Huanzhi's past growth background, learning process and the process of producing educational ideals are all flashbacks. The third section followed the first section, and Ni Huanzhi began to practice his ideal new life. As mentioned above, Mei sailed out of the Three Gorges along the Yangtze River in a big ship. Driving out of Kuimen, Mei was filled with joy: "Since then, she has entered a vast, open and free world! "In the second season, Mei's experience in Sichuan was flashback. This huge flashback was not connected with the time series of the first season until the eighth season. The purpose of emphasizing this flashback structure is to highlight the difference of "ideals" faced by the two protagonists when they are in the same boat and looking forward to a new life: as far as the overall structure of the novel is concerned, Ni Huanzhi is ending the depression since the Revolution of 1911, and the ideal he yearns for is the "enlightenment education" in the May 4th period; But for Mei, what she wants to end is the pain of not finding a way out after leaving home during the May 4th Movement. Her ideal is to move towards a broad and free world (society), and she is about to face the May 30th Movement with boiling blood. Ye Shengtao emphasized May 4th Movement and Mao Dun emphasized May 30th. The May 4th spirit is the Enlightenment, and the May 30th spirit is the mass movement (anti-imperialist). Mao Dun emphasized "May 30th" because it was a turning point for many intellectuals to understand "the masses" and also the beginning of the Great Revolution in China in the mid-1920s. At the same time, it can clearly outline the route of "revolutionary history" from "individual" to "collective" Secondly, as far as "shaping characters" is concerned, Ni Huanzhi is an idealist. There is a considerable gap between his ideal and reality, and his small family has no financial difficulties. From a secular point of view, Ni Huanzhi did not fail at all, but had a deep sense of disillusionment, because what failed was his "idealism". Different from Ni Huanzhi's idealism, Mei is a "modernist". Her belief is "don't cling to the past, don't dream about the future, just grasp the present and go all out to do it." "Relying on" modernism ",she got rid of the self-pity caused by the distress of engagement, decided to leave her husband in a short time, and immediately put it into action. Her "modernist" determination and action endow her with brave, resolute and dazzling "strong beauty", which makes the men around her, whether pale Wei Yu or vulgar Liu Yuchun, look timid and mediocre. Even in Luzhou, Mei still looks generous and frank among many classmates, and even those who act boldly are eclipsed. Thirdly, Mao Dun's attitude towards sorting out history can also be seen in his "Attitude towards the May 4th New Trend of Thought". In the first half of the novel, the new trend of thought spread to Chengdu, Sichuan as far back as the May 4th Movement. The eager anticipation for publications such as "New Youth" made Mei and Xu, two strangers, quickly become friends who talked about everything. In the process of absorbing new ideas, every strange new term gives May a strong sense of pleasure and extreme excitement. Although Mei absorbed all kinds of complicated new ideas impartially, the calm "narrator" of the novel stood in a higher position. For Mei's life predicament, these ideas are "empty ideals" and are not without criticism: individualism, humanitarianism, socialism, government, and various conflicting ideas are often found in a magazine and are also enthusiastically advocated. Ms. Mei also accepted it indiscriminately. Mei's actions made her develop from the May 4th Movement to May 30th, which is what Mao Dun called "how the times influenced people" and "how the vitality of people's organizations pushed the times in a new direction". During the May 4th Movement, Mei was deeply influenced by the times and became an enlightened figure. Driven by the May 4th Movement, she rushed out of the family cage. Although the goal ahead is hazy, she is still involuntarily pushed forward by history. By the end of the novel, Mei joined the "May 30th" demonstration, and the novel "Surrounded the General Chamber of Commerce! "In the' action order', this order is full of positive, positive and progressive forces, and the collective crowd has pushed the times to a new direction of mass movements. The development of Mei from May 4th to May 30th also showed the road from "individual" to "collective". During the May 4th Movement, under the influence of personality liberation, Mei pursued her own future and fought against social ugliness with her own strength. She has developed her "personal" ability to compete with environmental evil forces to the extreme, and she only believes in herself. As she said: "What group, what society, these words are good to write on paper orally, but I have never been squeezed by groups and the society has been cold." "I ran into the society alone. Does society welcome me? " [V] She never realized the existence of the "group", because the "group" is only a force that oppresses her, not a force that supports her. May came to Shanghai with this strong "individualism". When she wanted to find out the secret activities of Liang and Huang, she was so competitive that she wanted to engage in Liang's so-called "activities" alone, completely unaware of the significance of conducting political activities in a collective way. Even after Mei accepted Liang's arrangement to work in the Women's Federation, she was still bored and could not understand the power of mass movements. It was not until the exciting and angry May 30th tragedy that Mei decided to give up her infatuation with Liang and devote herself to her work that she felt the importance of "mass movement" and emphasized "collective" discipline. During the March on May 3 1 May, Mei, who was filled with indignation, was excited for many times and wanted to act with pleasure, but she always reminded herself: "Discipline is sacred!" She realized the seriousness of the revolutionary movement, and if she let her impulse act alone, she would only give the enemy a chance to divide and rule. Under the baptism of the climax of the May 30th Movement, although it can't be proved that Mei has successfully embarked on the road of collectivism, she finally realized the importance of the collective revolution and consciously suppressed her strong individualism. Four. Through Mei's life pursuit, The Rainbow truly shows the confusion, pain and pursuit of China intellectuals in the 1920s, and also vividly depicts Mei's character. The image of "rainbow" not only symbolizes Ms. Mei's ideal feelings; Beautiful, empty, so attractive, but so ethereal; At the same time, this image also implies the author's deep disillusionment with beauty and ideals. The narrative of The Rainbow always follows the life track of the protagonist Mei. However, because the protagonist's personality and thoughts are always exploring and pursuing ideals, her life track always keeps up with the trend of the times, which makes the narrative of her works always have extraordinary tolerance and broad vision, and has epic charm. From Eclipse to Rainbow, we can see that the aesthetic taste of Mao Dun's novels is indeed lofty and epic. He is always seeking to "leave his mark" in the modern times that changed in China in a beautiful way.