Midnight character

Midnight also describes the details of the characters' lives with realistic brushstrokes, which often contains profound thoughts. These details are both true and symbolic. The author has repeatedly described the details of the so-called "Taiwanese induction" that Mr. Wu really believes in persuading good and punishing evil. This detail is true, but it also symbolizes his stubborn landlord class ideological character. Another example is the little Victor and a withered white rose that Staff Officer Lei gave to Lin. This is a fact, but it also symbolizes their secret love and ending. Wu Sunfu is the hero of the novel Midnight and a typical national capitalist in China in 1930s. The author used a lot of pen and ink to put him into the complicated class struggle and social relations in China in 1930s, put him in a typical environment, and shaped a typical national capitalist. Because China's national bourgeoisie is the bourgeoisie of semi-colonial and semi-feudal countries, on the one hand, it is oppressed by imperialism and bound by feudalism, so it has contradictions with imperialism and feudalism; On the other hand, they are weak economically and politically, so they don't have the courage to completely oppose imperialism and feudalism. This duality of the national bourgeoisie determines that it is revolutionary to unite workers and peasants against the enemy in the presence of the enemy. When workers and peasants wake up, they have to unite with the enemy against them. They are reactionary as counter-revolutionary assistants. Wu Sun-fu is such a complicated figure with duality. He has one side of squeezing workers' sweat and hating the peasant movement, and the other side of resisting imperialism, the comprador class and developing national industries.

The duality of Wu Sunfu's personality has both progressive and reactionary aspects.

As far as its progressiveness is concerned, first of all, he dared to resist the control of imperialism and confront Zhao, a representative figure of comprador bourgeoisie and an imperialist broker. With the support of Tang Yunshan, Sun Jiren, manager of Pacific Company, and Wang, manager of Daxing Coal Mine Company, set up a "trust company" to operate bank trust business, determined to compete with Zhao Yi. In the struggle with Zhao, I launched an attack, met challenges, suffered setbacks, struggled, finally lost everything and finally stood firm. Wu Sun-fu's actions show that he is in direct contradiction with imperialism and the financial comprador bourgeoisie, and he has a spirit of resistance to imperialism's ambition to control the economic lifeline of China. He not only "hated" imperialism and the comprador bourgeoisie, but also had contradictions with Wu Sunfu and the reactionary government. He said, "As long as the country is like a country and the government is like a government, there must be hope for China's industry." This exposed his dissatisfaction with the years of warlord melee and the darkness of the government. Wu Sunfu is working hard to develop and revitalize China's national industry. He not only set up enterprises in rural areas, but also founded Yuhua Silk Factory and Zhong Yi Trust Company in Shanghai. With the increase of capital and the expansion of business scope, in addition to silk weaving, he also has light bulbs, thermos bottles, parasols, soap and rubber shoes. Although his ideal of revitalizing China's national industry could not be realized in China, a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society, it showed his national pride and patriotic enthusiasm to some extent from the special national conditions and specific historical environment of China at that time. Wu Sun-fu had little contact with feudal forces and hoped that he could build a beautiful bourgeois kingdom. He is an industrial capitalist who has been to Europe and America and has knowledge of capitalist enterprise management. In order to develop national industries, he opened power plants, rice mills, oil mills, money houses and pawn shops in the rural areas of Shuangqiao Town, his hometown. Objectively speaking, this move was an effort and attempt to carry out capitalist transformation of rural feudalism at that time, which had certain progressive significance. The reactiveness of Wu Sunfu's character is manifested in the following aspects: First, it is manifested in his attitude towards workers and peasants. On the one hand, Wu Sunfu opposed imperialism, feudalism and bureaucratic capitalism, on the other hand, he brutally oppressed and exploited workers and peasants and hated the revolutionary movement of workers and peasants. He must seek compensation from workers and farmers for the losses he suffered in enterprise management and the failure he suffered in public debt speculation. When he desperately extended working hours, compressed workers and cut wages, which led workers to strike for their right to subsistence, his face suddenly changed, "purple blisters appeared one after another", so he cursed the workers and viciously declared that he would give them some color to see that "those poor people only have one mouth to eat". In order to suppress the workers' movement, he not only bought off the "loyal and brave subordinates" and the yellow trade unions of Jiang and Wang factions, planted scabies among the workers, wooed and divided the workers' ranks, but also colluded with reactionary forces and used a large number of military and police agents to carry out bloody suppression, and even he personally took command. When his car was surrounded by angry people, he was "livid" and even ignored the lives of the women workers around him. He gave the driver a fierce command: "full throttle!" " All these actions exposed Wu Sunfu's reactionary nature as a national industrial capitalist who was hostile to the workers and peasants revolution in the 1930s. Wu Sun-fu also has the bourgeois nature of opportunism, which harms others and benefits others. He not only ate Zhu Yinqiu's silk factory and Chen Junyi's silk factory out of "personal interests", but also took advantage of people's crisis and used intrigue to swallow eight small and medium-sized daily necessities factories in one breath. His so-called development of national industries is actually to gain more profits and strengthen his own economic strength. He opposes financial speculation and is determined to compete with comprador forces. However, in order to make huge profits, he colluded with Zhao and speculated wildly on government bonds. In the public debt market, although he has many means, he is no match for Zhao, who is supported by American consortia. He was quickly defeated by Zhao and finally went bankrupt. Wu Sunfu's tragedy revealed the historical law that semi-colonial and semi-feudal China could not take the capitalist road. Midnight not only considers the panoramic display in social space, but also pays more attention to the panoramic simulation of social structure. He modeled everyone as a "sample" in his class. Write down their social role characteristics, such as Wu Sunfu, Zhao and other different types of capitalists, Grandpa Wu, Zeng Canghai and other landlords with different characteristics. Different modes of intellectuals, such as Li Yuting and Fan Bowen, are both "singles" and social roles with specific significance. Their personal fate actually reflects the basic situation of a social group.

In the large-scale panoramic description, Mao Dun pays attention to the combination of reality and distance in the specific plot arrangement, because only in this way can he show the color and waves of his works and conform to the reality of life.

He takes the city as a close shot, the countryside as a long-term layout, and the bizarre city as the main stage of his life. Through the conversation of the characters in the works or the change of political situation, rural clues are constantly brought out.

The structure of Midnight is intertwined and complicated, but it is not a mess, but a detailed analysis with a clear outline. The relationship and contradiction between characters and characters, characters and environment in the works constitute many specific events, and the author grasps the key events involving many characters and forms five important clues throughout:

(1) The "long" and "short" speculative activities of the public debt exchange represented by comprador capitalist Zhao, financial capitalist Du Zhuzhai and national industrial capitalist Wu Sunfu.

(2) Under the influence of the world economic crisis, imperialist economic aggression and warlord melee, the establishment and struggle of China's national industry, and the complete bankruptcy marked by the sale of Zhu Yinqiu's silk factory, the lease of Chen Junyi's silk factory, the seizure of Sun Jiren's boat, Zhou Zhongwei's refuge in the "Oriental Taipan" and Wu Sunfu's ruin.

(3) The miserable life of the workers and the masses, the reactionary face of capitalists, the hypocrisy and insidiousness of running dogs, the infighting of yellow trade unions, and the different routes of underground party leaders. The workers went on strike against the cruel exploitation of the capitalists.

(4) Make Mr. Wu, a feudal zombie, flee hastily, make the reactionary landlord Zeng Canghai die violently in the streets, and completely smash the rural revolutionary movement that Wu Sunfu dreamed of "Shuangqiao Kingdom".

⑤ It shows the empty and vulgar daily life, the abnormal psychology of seeking excitement and the depressed mental state of the "new Confucian scholars" attached to the bourgeoisie.

These five clues developed independently, each with a distinct track, and were closely related to each other, crossed into a network, or spread out in an all-round way or staggered way, thus reflecting the national essential characteristics of the semi-colonial and semi-feudal society in old China, and making readers almost see the whole picture of China in the early 1930s. Here, "the author weaves many intricate clues into a mature work of art by ingenious layout and ingenious artistic means." The characterization in Midnight is mainly the characterization of "typical characters" in "typical environment". In the characterization, Mao Dun paid attention not to the characters' personality, fate and mental state, but to the characteristics of the times they embodied, the brand engraved on the characters by the times, classes and political and ideological struggles, and their social ideology. The characters in his works are "representatives of certain classes and tendencies, so they are also representatives of some thoughts of their time." This strong color of the times and distinct ideology are the fundamental principles of Mao Dun's characterization.

Midnight caused a sensation as soon as it was published, because it successfully portrayed Wu Sunfu, a typical national capitalist who had never been portrayed in the history of China literature, and centered on him, it illuminated the whole social life of Shanghai in the 1930s, and illuminated the thoughts, personalities, psychology and destiny of all social classes and people living here, as well as their entanglements with history.

Wu Sunfu was born at an inopportune time. In the semi-colonial reality of China, he made an ambitious attempt to develop national industries, but ended in bankruptcy. On the one hand, Mao Dun profoundly analyzed a character's class attribute in politics, focused on writing his weakness and duality as a national bourgeoisie, and made no secret of his ideological reactiveness, such as scolding the * * * production party and using troops to suppress peasant riots. On the other hand, Mao Dun made no secret of his admiration. Even if Wu Sunfu, an industrial capitalist, collapses, he will eventually reveal some tragic feelings like a giant. His tragedy is the tragedy of China's modern entrepreneurs who are born at an untimely time and have unfulfilled aspirations.

Wu Sunfu is one of the few bourgeois images in the history of modern literature that appeared earliest and shaped most successfully.

The characters created by Mao Dun are not only the representatives of the times, classes and certain ideological tendencies, but also some individuals. Zhao, Jing and other figures in his works are immortal artistic models. In them, they have a strong and heavy flavor of the times and their own distinctive personality, forming an independent and complete art world. Mao Dun is obsessed with real life and devoted to the truth of art. In his literary works, "truth" has always been his criterion. He strongly advocated and advocated naturalism, and held sincere enthusiasm for defending realism close to it. He tried his best to avoid the common fault of the left-leaning mechanism in the literary world at that time. What Mao Dun is most concerned about is his true feelings about life. In his view, a full life is more important than correct concepts and skilled technology.

As can be seen from Mao Dun's works, he paid full attention to the complexity of life, especially the complexity of people and their relationships. He made repeated investigations and studies in the process of conceiving and collecting Midnight, so he knew everything about industry and finance, so Midnight can truly and meticulously reproduce life with vivid images. China's novels have been deeply influenced and infiltrated by the tradition of "historical biography" and "poetic coquettish". Mao Dun's Midnight is still in the framework of the interaction between these two traditions. On the one hand, Mao Dun provided a vivid historical picture for the ideological view of history, profoundly explained the reality of domestic economic struggle and class struggle in the 1930s, and reached a historical conclusion in line with proletarian ideology. On the other hand, Mao Dun has not forgotten the role of "poetry". He weaves personal and emotional historical experience into the shaping of specific characters, and puts humanistic reflection and humanitarian criticism in his works. Epic realism creation has a larger scale and momentum, reflecting a broader and more complex social outlook in a historical period, and thus can better express the essential characteristics of this era.

Since Midnight, most of the large-scale works describing social phenomena in China have formed a fairly stable creative mode. A group of writers began to recognize and try this creative mode. They are very concerned about social reality and actively describe the main social contradictions, so people call them social analysis novels. After 1930s, this tradition of realistic novels initiated by Mao Dun gradually rose to the mainstream and reached its peak in 1950s and 1960s.