Abstract
Before writing Big Breasts and Wide Hips, Mo Yan has already formed a fixed mode of polarized thinking and perception, and the mode is reflected in his choice of subject matter. One the hand, he dredges from memorized history and writes with a confirmative force; on the other hand, he criticizes the realistic history and writes with a negative attitude. Big Breasts and Wide Hips displays as the reasonable extension of both polarities and shows that it is both a grace deconstruction of the memorized history and a parody of the realistic history. The characters are designed to fall into two categories of heroes and clowns, with heroes being the product of both wartime environment and Mo Yan's illusory experience and clowns being both shaped by state machinery and ideology and armed to the teeth by imagology. From the perspective of aesthetic style, this novel demonstrates polar tendencies toward both sublimity and comicality (or absurdity). Sublimity is conceived by way of the co-configuration of symbolic setting and characterization, especially the deaths of the characters, while comicality originates from the construction of ironic environment and the awkward intractable relation between the characters and their circumstances. Through this polarized design, Mo Yan can convey his views on beauty (and ugliness) and values, with ugliness aestheticized into the scope of beauty.
First Page
76
Last Page
85
Recommended Citation
Zhao, Yong. 2013. "Mo Yan's Polarizations: An Interpretation of HisBig Breasts and Wide Hips." Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art 33, (1): pp.76-85. https://tsla.researchcommons.org/journal/vol33/iss1/9
