What are the thoughts of Zhou Puyuan-style problem parents in Thunderstorm?

In Cao Yu's classic drama Thunderstorm, there is a very plump figure, that is, the head of the Zhou government. Someone once compared Thunderstorm to. If this drama is really a thunderstorm, then the lightning burning in the sky on a thunderstorm night is Fan Yi, and the dark sky that brought the thunderstorm that night is Zhou Puyuan. Zhou Puyuan, the majestic parents of this feudal era, was full of shrewd and vicious capitalists who tried to spend his old age smoothly. He experienced four stages of his life, adolescence, youth, middle age and old age, and became the most complex and plump character in this play. How does the world interpret Zhou Puyuan? Is he really just a simple hateful, disgusting, shrewd and cold bad guy?

The necessity of Zhou Puyuan's existence

Since Zhou Puyuan was chosen as the most plump role in Thunderstorm, it is enough to show the necessity and versatility of this role. Because all the eight characters in the play are centered on Zhou Puyuan, he is the contradiction center of the play, an artistic image of flesh and blood, love and hate, sadness and joy, and also the maker of everyone's life tragedy and unfortunate fate in the whole story. He drove Lu Shiping away and separated his own flesh and blood. He turned Fan Yi into a perverted and twisted person. He drowned more than 2000 coolies for his own benefit. Cao Yu exposed the cruelty and selfishness of this man naked in front of the audience.

It is often heard that the feudal patriarch is accused of being so ruthless, but readers seem to have never considered such a problem. Why did Zhou Puyuan become such a person? Perhaps this is the original intention of Cao Yu to create this character. The author wants to break the shackles of feudalism and capitalism, thus leading to Zhou Puyuan. Zhou Puyuan was born in a traditional feudal family in China. He once went to Germany to study and was influenced by modern western culture. Generally speaking, the hero who came back from China is a very rebellious character, but Zhou Puyuan is not.

Infiltration of feudal culture

Western culture gave him the greed and shrewdness of capitalists, and his character still originated from China's feudal traditional education. Of course, western culture has also brought him modern ideas of personality liberation and equality, such as his love with Shi Ping. But the traditional concept of feudal family status still occupies the mainstream, then? Wrong door, wrong resident? The traditional secular concept made him choose to abandon this love and continue to guard the facade of the feudal family, brewing this love tragedy. Now that Zhou Puyuan has made this choice, it is doomed that his life will always be for this job? Family facade? Live. He obeyed his parents' arrangement and married a suitable Fan Yi according to the secular family concept. He personally put a stronger yoke on this feudal cage, which should have been a beautiful love marriage, and was also distorted by the feudal cage. The following tragic stories are all fresh seeds planted by Zhou Puyuan himself.

Zhou Puyuan paid a heavy price for the family appearance. He didn't stay with Shi Ping to play with her feelings, but for a false facade, he drove away the woman he loved deeply, and even drove him and his three-day-old child to the wall completely. Since then, he has been living in conscience and moral condemnation. He married Yi Fan for the appearance of his family, but in his heart, he reserved a place for Shi Ping, which is unfair to Yi Fan. But if he wants to be a successful person in a feudal family, he needs excellent women like Fan Yi to support his appearance. In this way, for the sake of the family's face, Zhou Puyuan completely hurt two women between love and not love.

The evil of capitalists

Apart from the tragedy imposed on Zhou Puyuan by the family, Zhou Puyuan was also valued by the feudal society? Successful man? Identity label, shaped into a sinister and diabolical capitalist. In fact, the standard of success for men in this society is as always. In the traditional concept, a man must have a decent job, a successful career and a happy family, which is the basis of his prominent social status. Zhou Puyuan is naturally pursuing all these successes, but the success is hard-won. Zhou Puyuan, who did whatever it took to succeed, was naturally pushed to the road of human crime.

Zhou Puyuan contracted to repair the Harbin River Bridge. In order to get death compensation from more than 2,200 workers, Zhou Puyuan deliberately put the contracted river bridge in danger, resulting in the death of more than 2,000 workers. Later, he grabbed compensation from these workers and made a windfall. In addition, Zhou Puyuan also secretly colluded with the military and police to kill the striking workers, and every penny in his pocket was stained with the blood of these low-level workers. However, it is for the pursuit of the social status of successful traditional men that Zhou Puyuan can become popular all over the world and earn these hard-earned money.

In this bloody profiteering process, Cao Yu revealed a phenomenon at that time: a successful man like Zhou Puyuan never realized that he was wrong, and he didn't even feel that he was committing a crime. The root cause of this phenomenon is actually the crime caused by feudal patriarchal culture. For thousands of years, whether at home or abroad, men seem to have been in the hegemonic position of human society, and the pursuit of success is also the dream of every man. Under the influence of this traditional thought, Zhou Puyuan's image is so fierce, indifferent, cruel and selfish.

Hypocritical patriarchal culture

Aside from the success of his career, an orderly and happy family is also a hypocritical life pursued by Zhou Puyuan. As a feudal parent, he naturally hoped to create a perfect and orderly family to consolidate his decent image in society, which in turn shaped his core position in the Zhou government. In this big feudal family he established, he simply did not feel the happiness and warmth of the family. Only his tyrannical rule and severe criticism and condemnation of his wife and children made everyone in the family respect and awe him, except for the affection between husband and wife and the warmth between father and son. This old patriarchal family is quite suffocating.

We can interpret Zhou Puyuan as the ruler, defender and victim of the restoration of feudal tradition. From the moment when he made a choice between love and family appearance, Zhou Puyuan was completely on the side of patriarchal culture. Unfortunately, the patriarchal culture under the feudal traditional thought led him to hell step by step, but did not save his soul at all.