In my opinion, it is more appropriate to describe Yu Hua's works with the phrase "what is more absurd than novels is real life".

When you search for "Yu Hua", you will find that the word "absurd" runs through almost all his works. Under the veil of absurdity, the writer thinks about "life and death", cries out for "humanity" and insists on "gentleness".

Among Yu Hua's early avant-garde masterpieces, The Mistakes by the River is a short and medium-length novel that should not be missed. In this masterpiece, the author's description of "absurd reality" reached a peak. It uses the shell of traditional detective stories to explain a bizarre case, and at the same time, through the breakthrough of the ending of traditional detective stories, it shows the loopholes and powerlessness of legal order and the cowardice and madness of human nature in absurd reality to the fullest.

The mistake by the river is an absurd world.

The novel revolves around the criminal police's detection of a "madman serial murder case". On a quiet early autumn afternoon, the townspeople found a "human head" by the river, which came from a 65-year-old widow, Mo Si's mother-in-law. After a gradual investigation by Ma Zhe, the chief criminal policeman, they finally confirmed that the murderer was a madman.

Who is the madman? He is the person that fourth mother-in-law takes care of like her own son. Why did the madman kill fourth mother-in-law At first, the police speculated that it was for money, because the "huge sum" that the deceased had reportedly saved was not found in the deceased, but it seemed far-fetched and became a madman's motive for killing, which later proved not to be the case.

People's view of a madman's murder is at best "the result of insanity"

The case seems to be over here, after all, the truth of the case has surfaced. Unusually, the culprit of this murder case is a madman who has lost his normal consciousness, and the law cannot punish him.

Does this sound familiar? "Because you are mentally ill, you can be exempted from punishment" and "Because you are under the age of 16, you can be exempted from criminal responsibility". An abnormal factor can actually be an excuse to escape legal sanctions, and legal loopholes have evolved into "evil" armor, doing evil unscrupulously.

The loopholes in the law have thus laid a curse for the madman behind to continue committing crimes. The same place-the quiet river, the same modus operandi-was cut off from the back of the dead man's neck, and the same weapon-a firewood knife that everyone could have killed a 35-year-old worker and a young child by the river.

As an old man, Moth's mother-in-law, as a middle-aged worker, as a teenager's child, has become the ghost of a madman's sword, which actually implies that everyone is in danger in the chaotic hidden reality. It reveals the inevitability of "safety and tranquility" falling in the absurd world.

Look at Ma Zhe, the chief of criminal police who opposes lunatics. His existence runs through the whole story. In the process of searching for the real murderer, he actually gradually discovered the truth of death.

In the face of madness, the law representing "justice and order" is helpless; A doctor who symbolizes "the guarantor of life safety" can't cure him; The town government, which represents "authority", is unwilling to actively solve this "trouble" because it is afraid of the consumption of hospitalization expenses. Society can only let "lunatics" disturb the civilized order that people are trying to build.

As a policeman and a just party, Ma Zhe cherishes and defends the safety of life. He can't watch the madman become a time bomb that continuously endangers life safety and throws society into chaos, so he chooses to solve this thorny problem in his own way. He pulled the trigger and killed the madman.

This is the problem. Ma Zhe is a normal person, and the law is powerless to the madman, but it is effective to Ma Zhe as a normal person. The law should maintain a just order, but it has to punish good people who do so. More absurdly, it seems that only by making normal people "crazy" can we save lives.

Ma Zhe did "turn into a madman" in the end. In order to save him, his wife and director called the doctor in a mental hospital in an attempt to "save his life" by fabricating the illusion of his mental disorder. In the end, under the torture of the indifferent doctor's numb "diagnosis", Ma Zhe fell into the trap of becoming a "madman".

In order to ensure the safety of life, normal people get rid of the "madman" and finally fall into an endless cycle of becoming a "madman"; Justice and hospitals that maintain life safety and civilized order have become accomplices in killing people and bending the law and worsening chaos. How ironic! How cruel! How ridiculous!

The novel sets the crime place by the river. Seemingly quiet and beautiful riverside, but there have been many bloody cases, which shows that there is actually an undercurrent under the calm and stable appearance.

The murderer is crazy, but the repeated appearance of clothes dripping from his hands (suggesting to wash away the blood) has to make people suspect that he is actually awake. He is the embodiment of violence, blood, ignorance, abnormal condition and anger, and also the externalization of human madness.

There are also dead people of different ages and identities, all suspects who are afraid of conviction, and ordinary townspeople who later heard that "madness" seriously threatened social security.

In this way, the author constructs an absurd world by the river, but it actually reflects a more absurd reality.

The absurd reality is a portrayal of people's madness;

The theme of the novel can be expounded so profoundly, thanks to the author's deliberate use of "narrative blank" in the process of constructing the story, that is, not detailing how the murderer committed the crime cruelly or how the police solved the case brilliantly, but focusing on the reactions of onlookers related to this series of cases, such as Moth's mother-in-law, children, wang hong, Liang Xu, young woman and Liang Xu's "fish friend".

What impressed me most about Yao Si's mother-in-law's description was that she told her neighbors that she was bitten off by a madman and beaten:

"'When he hit me, he was exactly like my dead husband. This is really cruel. At that time, her face was filled with happiness. "

Her husband died when she was 0/8 years old, and she was widowed in an old post office without friends for 48 years. I don't talk to people on weekdays, and my inner loneliness has nowhere to express. It can be said that the appearance of the madman made her feel some long-lost warmth, which seems to be a compensation for her "childless". In order to seize this little warmth, she endured the cruel and absurd torture of a madman, wandered around this absurd town with the morbid psychology of "Stockholm", but finally died of that little faint and illusory warmth.

The child is one of the people who found the "head". In the whole process of solving the case, his "curiosity, innocence and fearlessness" is in sharp contrast with the "fear and avoidance" of adults. Malik Zhe, he symbolizes "the exploration of truth", so his death implies that in the absurd world, innocence and truth-seeking will eventually be destroyed by chaos.

Young Hong, a young woman who lost her hair, and Xu Liang's "fish friend" (the person who discovered Xu Liang's first suicide and reported it) were all people who had appeared at the scene of the deceased, and of course they were all suspects.

In the face of inquiry, the woman's answer is upside down and she is afraid of being convicted; Men have been shouting "I am not afraid of being suspected", which is actually a sign of being afraid of being suspected; Liang Xu's "fish friends" don't care about Liang Xu himself or his suicide. Both men and women only turn a blind eye to the truth, to the lost life, to the troubles, and to their own safety.

Liang Xu only went to the river when Yao Si's mother-in-law was killed, but he was mentally ill and fantasized that he had been to the river three times to see the dead. He always felt guilty and couldn't escape it, so he committed suicide for the second time and died in his room. What he alludes to is the situation that people are worse off than dead under the torture of reality absurdity.

It is the reaction of these "bystanders", together with the inaction of the "defenders" of justice, hospitals and the government, that reveals the core of absurd reality-the madness of people's hearts.

Starting from cultivating the mind and nourishing the nature, we should look for an outlet to break through the absurd reality.

Now that we have found the core of absurd reality and seen the suffering it brings to fragile lives, we must find an exit to save lives trapped in the abyss of suffering.

The novel is largely the author's strong accusation against the social authority, so the authority that guides social development must introspect and spare no effort to improve it, which is the responsibility of the "external environment" for social construction. But the fundamental reason is that we, especially every ordinary individual, should start from ourselves, cultivate our hearts and stand out in the iron prison of absurd reality.

Only by cultivating one's inner strength can one have enough courage and strength to resist external attacks from negative forces such as violence, bloodshed, injustice, plunder, anger and fraud; Only by cultivating one's inner integrity can one have enough confidence and capital to find the right direction in the chaos and not lose oneself because of the illusory temptation; Only by cultivating your heart gently can you tolerate all kinds of injuries in life calmly enough, let it irrigate good human nature, thrive and let warm light illuminate more dark corners.

Like the 35-year-old deceased who just got married and his wife just got pregnant, he "makes people feel as fresh as the sun."

"We are all thirty years old. I don't think it is necessary to decorate the room like this, but he must decorate it like this. " (The wife of the deceased said).

The sunshine-like fresh decoration reflects the expectation and joy of the deceased for life and new life, and he insists on expressing his cherish and respect for life in a ritualized way. I don't know if his sunny mood can affect his wife and future children, but I hope so.

Then how can we cultivate our hearts? With my limited superficial knowledge, I must first maintain a deep awe of humanity, truth, death, life, freedom and so on. If you are always in awe, you will not be arrogant; Without arrogance, it is difficult for people to be arrogant.