I. Detailed Outline
II. Sample Essay
Outline for dissecting the Kiều excerpt at the Ngưng Bích Pavilion
I. Outline for Analyzing the Kiều Excerpt at Ngưng Bích Pavilion
1. Introduction
Introduction to the Kiều Excerpt at Ngưng Bích Pavilion
2. Body
a. Kiều's Solitary and Bitter Circumstances
- The initial six lines depict the natural setting at Ngưng Bích Pavilion, highlighting its space and time.
- The artistic space is portrayed through Thúy Kiều's perspective:
+ Ngưng Bích Pavilion is where Kiều is loosely confined. The term 'spring lock' signifies this.
+ Despite its beauty, the place feels vast, desolate, and cold:
- Looking into the distance, only faint mountains are visible.
- Looking up, only a 'near moon' is visible.
-> It's evening, evoking sadness.
- Further away, gazing at the 'boundless vista' reveals yellow sandbars and pink dust along the long, deep paths.
=> Artistic enumeration, contrasting 'far hills'/'near moon', inversion, and the phrase 'boundless vista'
-> Evokes a creepy, silent space with no human presence. Confronted with this scene, Kiều feels utterly alone.
- She's pained, humiliated for her plight:
The morning clouds, the evening lamps
Half love, half scene as if dividing a heart
- The phrase 'morning clouds, evening lamps' suggests cyclical time, circling from 'morning clouds' to 'evening lamps'. Time flows, repeating itself, leaving Kiều feeling desperate with loneliness, sadness, and shame to the point of 'half broken'.
- The phrase 'as if dividing a heart' expresses Kiều's bitter sorrow, her shattered heart.
=> Distinctive punctuations, using the backdrop to reveal Kiều's emotions. Nature is vast while humans are small, solitary.
b. Kiều's Fond Memories of Kim Trọng and Parents
Amidst her loneliness in a foreign land, Kiều's mood shifts from sadness to reminiscence. Kiều recalls her lover and parents. This longing is poignantly described through internal monologues.
- First, Kiều remembers Kim Trọng because in her family's crisis, Kiều sacrificed her beautiful first love to save her family, partially 'repaying her parents' kindness'. Thus, to Kiều, Kim Trọng is the greatest loss, and this pain continues to tear at Kiều's heart, always thinking of Kim Trọng.
+ She remembers the scene of drinking and swearing vows with Kim Trọng under the moon. 'Thought' here can be seen as a label. Nguyễn Du doesn't use 'remember' but 'think'. 'Think' encompasses both memory and imagination, imagining the loved one.
+ Thúy Kiều imagines that, in a distant place, her lover is also thinking of her, eagerly awaiting news: 'News, like mist, waiting for dawn'.
+ Then suddenly, she connects her fate, 'lonely at the corner of the sky and sea'. Kiều wonders: 'When will the washed rouge fade away?':
- The verse intends to speak of Kiều's steadfast heart, her enduring love for Kim Trọng that will never fade or wane, despite facing numerous obstacles in life.
- The verse also suggests another interpretation: Kiều's pure heart is tarnished, marred by individuals like Tú Bà, Mã Giám Sinh, when will it be cleansed?
-> In the tragedy of love, Thúy Kiều experiences moral anguish.
- Remembering her lover, Kiều also feels sorry thinking of her parents: The word 'sorry' expresses Kiều's heartfelt concern for her parents:
+ She worries sorrowfully about the pitiful figure of her parents, when morning comes, or in the evening, leaning by the door, awaiting news from their daughter, or hoping she'll come to ease their burdens.
+ She worries not knowing who's caring for her parents as the weather changes.
+ She feels sorry as her parents grow older and weaker, unable to be by their side to care for them.
-> The author uses idioms such as 'waiting for dawn', 'warm breeze, cold', 'separated by sun and rain', and historical references, geographical landmarks like 'Lai Courtyard, Tử Root' to express Kiều's feelings of longing, worry, and filial piety towards her parents.
=> Here, Nguyễn Du objectively describes Thúy Kiều's emotions surpassing the prejudices of feudal ideology: placing love before filial piety.
In the dire situation at Ngưng Bích Pavilion, Kiều is the most pitiful, yet she forgets herself to think of her lover, think of her parents. This demonstrates Kiều's loyalty, filial piety, worthy of respect.
c. Kiều's Sadness and Anxiety through Landscape Perspectives
- The refrain 'sadness looks on' repeated four times creates a melancholic resonance, becoming a recurring motif depicting the rising layers of sorrow in Kiều's heart. The natural landscape through Kiều's eyes evokes profound sadness:
- The sail faintly appears, sometimes hidden, sometimes visible at the horizon, evoking a journey of obscure wandering, not knowing where the shore lies.
- The floating petals on the new water hint at a fragile, delicate fate, drifting aimlessly on the unpredictable river of life, not knowing where it goes.
- The wild grass spreads at the foot of the sky and earth evokes a life faded, pitiful, hopeless, prolonged without end.
- The image of 'wind sweeping the swollen face' and the booming sound of waves 'surrounding the seat' evoke a sense of fear, as if warning, right after this, the storm of fate will rise, pushing, burying Kiều's life.
=> Through metaphorical artistry, a system of rhetorical questions, and words like 'faintly', 'far away', 'faint', 'melancholic', 'lush', 'booming'... contribute to highlighting the multifaceted sorrow in Kiều's heart. The author depicts the scene from afar to near; colors from pale to bold; sounds from quiet to loud; sadness from faint, vague to anxious, fearful, leading to the stormy climax of inner turmoil, the pinnacle of emotion in Kiều's heart. All are images of uncertainty, fragility, drifting, deadlock, swirling upheaval. At this moment, Kiều becomes most desperate, weakest, hence she falls into Sở Khanh's trap, and then plunges into a life of disgrace.
3. Conclusion
General Thoughts
II. Sample Essay Analysis of Kiều's Excerpt at Ngưng Bích Pavilion
Nguyễn Du is a cultural figure, a great poet of our nation. He has bequeathed to our Vietnamese literature a masterpiece of medieval literature - the work 'The Tale of Kiều'. Besides its great values in reality and humanity, 'The Tale of Kiều' is also highly successful in terms of art. Considering solely the artistic portrayal of character's inner thoughts and the technique of describing emotional landscapes, Nguyễn Du has reached the highest pinnacle in history with the excerpt of Kiều at Ngưng Bích Pavilion, successfully depicting the scene of loneliness, sadness, and Kiều's loyal, filial heart.
