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Prompt: Analyze the profound humanitarian values in the short story 'The Wife Collector'
Sample essay on the deep humanitarian values in the short story 'The Wife Collector'
Assignment
Writer Kim Lan (born in 1920), birth name Nguyen Van Tai, from Phu Luu village, Tan Hong commune, Tien Son district, Bac Ninh province. Kim Lan, though not prolific, is considered one of the talented modern short story writers of Vietnamese literature. He possessed a rare dedication to the rural scenery, rural people, and the world of his homeland, combined with a deep and touching heart, creating the most profound and emotional writings. In a literary career spanning over fifty years, with only two collections of short stories, 'To Be a Wife and Husband' (1955) and 'The Ugly Dog' (1962), Kim Lan left an indelible mark. A single story like 'The Wife Collector' (extracted from 'The Ugly Dog') - considered his best short story - could be the dream of many writers. The story underwent a lengthy creative process, originally drawn from the unfinished novel 'The Settlement Village' from the pre-Revolutionary period. Kim Lan rewrote it upon the request of the Văn Nghệ newspaper. This alone indicates the depth of contemplation on content and meticulous artistic insight in 'The Wife Collector.'
In the short story 'The Wife Collector,' Kim Lan aims to reveal his profound humanitarian perspective. It is when the writer discovers the miraculous beauty of labor in the midst of agonizing poverty, in any dire circumstance, humans rise above death, turning towards family life, still loving each other and hopeful for tomorrow.
Not by chance. 'The Wife Collector' is, above all, a tale of hunger.
Just a few words, 'The hunger had overflowed...' evoke horrifying memories for the Vietnamese about a great peril that swept away nearly a tenth of the population in this country. True to Kim Lan's meaning, that peril 'overflowed,' meaning it was as powerful as a relentless waterfall.
The writer's description creates a haunting impression through two images: the hungry people and the hungry space. He depicts the portrait of the hungry people as 'faces hollow and dark,' but most frighteningly, he compares them to ghosts twice: 'Families from regions like Nam Dinh, Thai Binh, carrying each other, appeared as gray as ghosts,' and 'the shadows of the hungry people moved quietly like ghosts.' Such comparisons reflect Kim Lan's unique perception of that terrifying era: a time when the boundary between humans and ghosts, life and death, was as fragile as a strand of hair, the underworld merging into the earthly realm, the living and the dead mingling in the abyss of the netherworld. In this tumultuous world of the living and the dead, the sound of the wailing crows and the 'smell of decaying bodies' intensify the sense of eerie horror. Indeed, hunger revealed its devastating power to a horrific extent. In such a setting, Kim Lan introduces a daring love story. Oh, all those stories that are both heartbreaking and heartwarming: four bowls of rice cakes during famine creating a love story, a pot of rice husks during scarcity enough for a wedding feast... Kim Lan's pen, unflinchingly chasing reality to the core, gives the story a unique, rugged, gloomy, and, one might say, somewhat ruthless 'background.'
However, the writer's main concern is not to construct an indictment in 'The Wife Collector' but to shift towards something else, something more important. From the darkness of circumstances, Kim Lan wants to illuminate a special poetic essence of the human soul. The darkness of the painful realistic picture serves as a lever for the bright canvas of human compassion to shine with a special brilliance of a fervent, touching humanism.
In literature, people often emphasize the heart more than talent. However, if that talent does not reach a certain level, how can that heart be revealed? In 'The Wife Collector,' it's the same: Kim Lan's sincere heart moves the reader first through the talent of storytelling and then the skill of leading the narrative.
Crafting a story here means creating a unique scenario. The very title 'The Wife Collector' encapsulates such a scenario. In an interview, Kim Lan enthusiastically explained: ''Nhặt' means picking up, scavenging. In the famine of 1945, it seemed nearly impossible for laborers to escape death. Its darkness covered the entire village. In that situation, the value of a person became extremely low; one could acquire a wife with just a few rice cakes from the market - truly 'picking up' a wife, as I mentioned in the story.' Thus, the sacred (wife) turned into something commonplace (picked up). However, the story's scenario has another thread: the protagonist of this 'picking up' action is Trang, a poor, ugly, settled young man, experiencing hunger and suddenly acquiring a wife, even having a wife follow him, is truly peculiar. Peculiar to the extent that it creates a series of astonishments for the neighbors, Mrs. Tu - Trang's mother, and Trang himself: 'Until now, he still seemed skeptical, like it wasn't true. He now has a wife, right?' This situation evokes a nuanced state of the human psyche: a state of indescribable fluctuation - everything is erratic, like having and not having. Is this joy or sadness? Laughter or tears?... This special state of mind gave Kim Lan's short story a touch of poetry.
Crafting a story is not enough; it's like the skill of lighting a firework. With good fire and the right spark, but if the fuse has many deaf parts, it still sprays like usual. Therefore, the craft of storytelling must be linked to the skill of leading the story to create depth and appeal. Kim Lan's storytelling skill is exceptionally successful through the use of a unique farmer's language, writing that closely approaches the core of real life, making each word seem to 'sprout' from the abundant material of life. However, the most crucial aspect lies in the realism of psychological insight. It must be said that the story's situation is very advantageous for Kim Lan in bringing out a very subtle flow of emotions in each character. Two cases are particularly noteworthy: Mrs. Tu and Trang. These are two types of psychological reactions to a similar situation, yet no one is like the other.
Young Mr. Trang, simple-minded and naive, who would have thought he was genuinely happy? But the happiness is too overwhelming, too sudden, making Trang truly bewildered. The intoxication of happiness soared in the spiritual realm, making Trang weightless, floating in the realm of dreams. Kim Lan's pen, once awake and alert, now intoxicated with sentiment, how similar. More accurately, the writer must stand between that intoxication and sobriety to 'sense' the depths of life, creating the 'divine pen' as in Kim Lan's writing in 'The Wife Collector.' Then that bewilderment before happiness quickly turned into concrete, tangible joy. It is the joy of family happiness - a simple yet immense joy. No wonder a famous person like Secnusepxki once dreamed: 'I am willing to trade my entire career if I know that in a small, warm room somewhere, there is a woman waiting for me for dinner.' Kim Lan's poor young man truly achieved such joy: 'Suddenly he felt his love for his home peculiarly connected. He had a family. He would have children with his wife there. The house was like a warm nest, sheltering from rain and sun. A source of sudden, overwhelming joy filled his heart.' A truly moving joy, intertwined with reality and dreams. An especially touching aspect is that Trang's joy is luckier than Nam Cao's Chi Pheo: happiness is securely in Trang's hands. As for Thi No, she barely touched Chi Pheo's fingertips and was snatched away by the dark underworld. A very significant detail by Kim Lan: 'He eagerly ran out to the yard; he also wanted to do something to contribute to the renovation of the house.' Compared to the 'stiff' posture at the beginning of the work, this 'eager' action by Trang is a significant turning point, a transformative step that changes both fate and personality: from pain to happiness, from disillusionment to loving life, from naive to conscious. That's why Kim Lan found sufficient grounds to inject a profound sense of duty into Trang's train of thought: 'Now he sees that he should be a responsible person, he feels he has a duty to care for his future wife and children.' Trang truly experiences a 'spiritual rebirth,' a great value of happiness.
Analyzing 'The Wife Collector,' it's puzzling how many overlook a crucial sentence by Kim Lan. That is the concluding sentence of the story: 'In Trang's mind, he still sees the hungry crowd and the red flag fluttering...' A conclusion like that carries the weight of both artistic and thematic aspects for the entire story. The image of the red flag with a yellow star is a truly fresh sign of significant societal change, decisive for the transformation of each person's fate. This is something that the literary works of the realistic period from 1930 to 1945 failed to see. The fate of individuals in realistic literature is synonymous with a deadlock. The new literary era after the August Revolution raised and resolved the issue of human fate in a different, more optimistic, and hopeful way.
The psychological process in Mrs. Tu is somewhat more intricate than in the character Trang. If in the son, joy takes control, and the psyche develops in a straight line fitting for a young, blissful sapling, then in the mother, the psychological dynamics move in a convoluted manner, aligning with the hidden sorrows in the deep recesses of the elderly woman's personal history of endurance and kindness.
Similar to her son, the initial emotional state in Mrs. Tu is astonishment. The son is astonished before something he already knows, while the mother is astonished before something seemingly incomprehensible. The appearance of the girl in the house is a strange phenomenon for Mrs. Tu in the first few minutes. Her state of astonishment is deepened by a series of skeptical questions: 'Why is there a woman in that house? What woman stands right at the foot of her son's bed like that? Why is she greeting me with 'u'? It's not Đục's child. Who is it?' Then again: 'Oh well, how is this, huh?' The mother's heart, full of sensitivity towards her son, is very aware of this, so why did Kim Lan let the mother character remain bewildered for so long? A bit exaggerated, a bit 'dramatic' in Kim Lan's pen? No, the inner writer is not accustomed to posing. This is the pain of the writer: the very dilemma of the circumstances robbed the mother of that sensitivity.
If in Trang, astonishment leads straight to joy, then in Mrs. Tu, the psychological movement is more complex. After understanding everything, the old lady 'bows her head in silence.' A silence full of inner turmoil. It is a mix of sorrows, concerns, and compassion. The humane love of the mother is truly embracing: '... can they raise each other through this famine?' In the phrase 'they,' the mother has shifted from sympathy for her son to her daughter-in-law. In the act of bowing, the mother accepts her son's happiness with the experience of life, with the price of a life of toil, with a deep awareness of circumstances, vastly different from the son who accepts happiness with a need, with a spiritual dream floating.
Then the love sinks into worry, creating a perpetual state of fluctuating emotions. The author delves into the stream of Mrs. Tu's thoughts: thinking about her incomplete motherly duties, about the old man, about the youngest daughter, about her life's misery, about the future of her children..., to finally converge all worries, love, into a simple sentence: 'You guys getting married now, too pitiful...' Despite the myriad of sad worries, the mother's joy still tries to shine. Touchingly, Kim Lan allows this miraculous light to emanate from... a pot of rice bran porridge. Let's hear the mother say: 'Here's the sweet soup - the old lady scoops out a bowl - enjoy, it's good for your health.' This word 'good' needs to be perceived in a special way. It's not an emotion about material (an emotion about rice bran porridge), but a spiritual emotion: in the mother, faith in the transformation of her son's happiness from bitterness to sweetness. Choosing the image of a pot of rice bran porridge, Kim Lan wants to showcase the human essence: in any circumstance, relationships and hope cannot be destroyed; humans want to live and endure, and the human essence is evident in living with relationships and hope. Yet Kim Lan is not a romantic writer. Mrs. Tu's joy remains a pitiful joy, as reality is still harsh with the 'bitter and choking' rice bran porridge.
Explore the short story 'The Rag Picker,' alongside the analysis Deep Human Values in the short story 'The Rag Picker' presented here; don't overlook: Analysis of Realistic Values in the work 'The Rag Picker,' Analysis of the unique value of the situations created by Kim Lan in 'The Rag Picker,' Analysis of the art of storytelling in 'The Rag Picker,' Analysis of the character Trang in the work 'The Rag Picker.'
