Understanding of "Root-seeking Literature" from Han Shaogong's Daddy Daddy

"Root-seeking literature" is a cultural creation trend that appeared in the mid-1980s, with "cultural root-seeking" as its ideological and artistic pursuit. There are two main tendencies in his works: one is to seek the spirit of retiring from the people from the break between reality and tradition, and to tap its positive spiritual content; The second is to criticize tradition from the secret connection between reality and tradition, and to criticize reality by criticizing tradition.

Han Shaogong is a representative writer of "root-seeking literature", and his masterpiece Daddy Daddy is regarded as a model of "root-seeking literature". In The Roots of Literature, he believes that "literature has roots, and the roots of literature should be deeply rooted in the soil of national traditional culture. The roots are not deep and the leaves are difficult to flourish. " He once asked, "Where is the splendid Chu culture?" "When and where did the profound origin of Chu culture dry up?" "Dad Dad" is his exploration of Chu culture, and from the perspective of modern consciousness to find the root buried in the depths of national cultural psychology.

? Dad, Dad describes the life of a villager in a small mountain village called Jitouzhai, which is almost isolated from the world. Time is also stagnant in this place, because things have rarely changed since ancient times, so time is meaningless. The author hides a small village deep in the mountains and above the white clouds, removes its specific direction and time coordinates, and allegorizes it into a virtual scene of Wu Chu's folk cultural life.

Throughout the whole novel, the protagonist Bing Zi is a born idiot who can only say two words taught by others: "Dad" and "Mother X". When he is happy, he urges others to call him "Dad". When someone makes her angry or bullies him, he will scold "mother X", and he will be insulted and beaten whether he pleases others or curses others. This is a deformed, ugly and dull image, and this image was created as the "bad root" of national culture, which symbolizes the ugliness, stubbornness and irrationality of life and the deformed and backward traditional civilization.

There are many stories in Jitouzhai. For example, it is said that snakes are lewd, and then there is a special way to get snake gall. It is said that there is a kind of worm that eats fish and chickens after poisoning. The detoxification method is to learn to crow three times after drinking the blood of white cattle; It is said that if you get lost, you should pee and scold your mother to get rid of the so-called "fork ghost"; It is said that magicians harm people, magicians prolong life and so on. There are many traditional superstitions and taboos in this place, such as: Tai Chi pictures should be hung on kiln fires; Women and children are forbidden to enter the kiln; It is forbidden to call names when teenagers are carrying mud blanks; C's mother gave birth to a deformed child because she offended spider essence, and so on. Whenever encountering incomprehensible phenomena or inconclusive events, people in Jitouzhai will turn to a wizard who can understand the world and ask him to point out the maze. These seemingly absurd behaviors may be the legacy of witchcraft thinking mode.

In Daddy Daddy, Han Shaogong reproduces the primitive life state of Hunan and Chu, and in the process of reproduction, through the depiction of Bing Zi, outlines some abnormal and morbid thinking patterns of people towards traditional culture. By describing all the behaviors of the villagers in Jitouzhai, he showed their ignorant, blind and irrational mental state, thus analyzing the ancient, closed and almost primitive cultural inertia and expressing the author's examination and examination of the inferiority of national traditional culture. At the same time, the characteristics of root-seeking literature are also reflected in the works, such as: the theme of the works and the objects reflected by culture present distinct regional characteristics; In terms of expression techniques, there are not only traditional literary techniques in China, but also modern symbols, hints and abstractions, which enrich and deepen the cultural connotation of the works, and so on.