Prompt: Analyze the character of Mrs. Tu - a poor mother in the short story 'The Bride Picker' by Kim Lan.
Sample essay: Analyzing the character of Mrs. Tu - a poor mother in the short story 'The Bride Picker' by Kim Lan.
Completed Assignment
Kim Lan belongs to the talented short story writers of modern Vietnamese literature. He often writes about rural areas and the simple, kind-hearted people, rich in love and affection. 'The Bride Picker' is one of his exemplary works. The work vividly portrays the tragic situation of our people during the famine of 1945 while affirming and praising love, care, the desire for happiness, and the future of laborers. In it, the character Mrs. Tu is vividly depicted as a poor, experienced mother, rich in love, and with a rich, complex inner life.
Kim Lan has a deep understanding of rural life and the lives of the people, thus he has profound and touching writings. The story 'The Bride Picker' (excerpted from the collection 'Ugly Dog') is considered Kim Lan's finest short story. This story underwent a rather lengthy creative process. It was originally derived from the novel 'The Hamlet' (a novel written but unfinished before the Revolution). After peace was restored, Kim Lan rewrote it. 'The Bride Picker' bears the mark of a long process of deep contemplation on content and meticulous artistic insight.
The work vividly reenacts the extremely tragic situation of famine in rural Vietnam caused by the French colonialists and Japanese fascists in 1945. The author vividly describes the portraits of those starving people as 'hollow, dark faces,' 'Families from the regions of Nam Dinh, Thai Binh, carrying each other on their backs, leading each other up, gray like ghosts,' and 'the shadows of hungry people walking quietly like ghosts.' In the chaos of that world where the living and the dead coexist, the cry of the crow 'howls pitifully' along with the 'stench of human flesh.' But more importantly, alongside the darkness of the painful reality painting is the brightness of human kindness, of a profound humanitarianism, touching.
In the short story 'The Bride Picker,' Kim Lan unveils his profound humanitarian perspective. The writer discovers the miraculous beauty of laborers amidst harsh poverty, in any dire circumstance, human beings still surpass death, turn towards family life, continue to love and hope for tomorrow.
Deeply embodying that ideology is the portrayal of the character, Mrs. Tu, in unexpected situations: her son suddenly has a wife.
Mrs. Tu's psyche is somewhat intricate, with hidden sorrows in the depth of an elderly person's soul who has experienced much and is compassionate.
The initial psychology of Mrs. Tu is astonishment at an seemingly incomprehensible event. The girl appearing in her house at first is an odd phenomenon. Mrs. Tu's state of astonishment is deepened by a series of suspicious questions: 'Why is there a woman in that house? What woman stands right beside my son's bed like that? Why greet me with disdain? It's not Đục's children. Who could it be?' Then again: 'Oh dear, what could this be?' This surprise reflects the writer's pain: the same entanglement of circumstances that robbed a mother of her sensitivity to the fact that her beloved son has a wife.
Through the art of delving into psychological dynamics, Kim Lân has excelled in analyzing Mrs. Tứ, a poor but noble-hearted mother who understands life and people. Alongside Mrs. Tứ, the short story The Wife Who Picks Up Trash also shines with the characters Tràng and Thị. To grasp the essence of the work and the distinctive traits of each character, you may explore other essays or writings for grade 12 such as: Analyzing the character Tràng in the work The Wife Who Picks Up Trash, Analyzing the character of the wife who picks up trash, thereby highlighting the fate of the Vietnamese people before the Revolution, Analyzing Tràng's wife in the story The Wife Who Picks Up Trash, Analyzing the context of picking up wives in the story The Wife Who Picks Up Trash,...
