Only when Hoan, a colleague, deeply understood and felt Khiem's lonely soul did he truly find love and sympathy in his soul. For Khiem, Hoan was his endless source of joy. But then that love was interrupted, and he was extremely lonely. After a process of intense inner struggle, Khiem "came back to life", overcame the shock and sentimentality, and threw himself into work to find himself again.
Tu in The Wedding Without a Marriage Certificate is a talented and dedicated teacher, with a sensitive soul, who loves beauty and literature, but has to face a life full of jostling and pitfalls in life. He increasingly feels that the role of a teacher is denied. Faced with the power of the material whirlwind, he becomes distant from the complexity and mundaneness, separates himself from a life that is gradually being stripped of its true values, and makes friends with a small attic, "up here, Tu can let two lines of tears flow down his thin cheeks" [29,14]. Tu painfully realizes an injustice: "Personality is a commodity with a price. So are feelings. People with a conscience are always lonely. People with knowledge are sad all their lives. This era creates tragedy. Or tragedy is inherent in the nature of life [29,80]. Seeing his close friends gradually losing their qualities, Tu wondered and asked himself questions and answered them with lingering sadness. Betrayed by his wife, Tu's soul was greatly hurt, he gnawed at his misfortune in endless pain. He cried for his crushed fate, for his wife's betrayal, not knowing where to hide his tears. Expressing the psychological flows flowing in the character Tu, the author sowed in the reader's heart sympathy and pity for the bright personality of a teacher who was crushed. But Tu still kept his faith in life "after the noisy, busy hours, when he was quiet, Tu realized that people are truly rich and can never be completely deprived. The ancients often said that the right is quiet, quiet is bright. That was completely true for him at this moment. The rain washed the sky. The quiet washed his soul". [29, 278].
In Ho Anh Thai's works, his characters live a diverse, rich, and complex psychological journey. With the ability to analyze the character's mood changes in a subtle and sensitive way, Ho Anh Thai has created a system of character images with a deep, profound spiritual life to express his ideas about people and the times. The reality of life and the mood of people in his works are always closely linked to the objective and subjective events they encounter in life. We see that Ho Anh Thai's characters are often strongly affected by the living environment. Even small events make Ho Anh Thai's characters think and worry, and sometimes unexpected events are enough to cause heavy shocks in their inner world.
The Man and the Car Running Under the Moonlight is a work full of poetry and has pages of very successful character psychological analysis. We see Ho Anh Thai's very sharp perspective in capturing and dissecting the subtle vibrations in the character's soul, especially the character Toan - a person with a rich and sensitive inner life. Describing Toan's emotions, the writer often puts the character before what happens around him. The time he caught Khac secretly reading his manuscript, "Toan's whole body seemed to tense up. He often had a very strange feeling when he suddenly saw someone reading his manuscript or poetry book without permission: His heart pounded, his mind was dizzy, cold, as if someone was aiming at him. At the same time, he felt like someone was staring at him, while he was taking off his outer clothes" [36,43-44] or when he first met My, Toan remembered "A time long ago, I also heard a lovely girl's voice? The smell of grilled meat on the charcoal stove is fragrant. The aroma of Vietnamese coriander, fish mint, and Vietnamese basil.” [36,45].
To successfully portray the character's psychology, Ho Anh Thai flexibly used the artistic technique of internal monologue. The writer was very sensitive in capturing the character's psychology, following and expressing very well the developments in Toan's psychology. Many events and situations that are very normal scenes of daily life are
Maybe you are interested!
-
Fiction, Imagination - A Powerful Artistic Technique in Expressing Critical Inspiration -
Inspiration of worldly and personal life in Vietnamese poetry 1975-2000 - 13 -
Inspiration of worldly and personal life in Vietnamese poetry 1975-2000 - 1 -
The Image of Vietnamese Farmers in Worldly Inspiration - Personal Life. -
Young Vietnamese Poetry During the Anti-American Resistance War - Inspiration and Tone - 1
The author evaluates and feels through Toan's deep subconscious. Faced with countless situations in life, Toan has had thoughts of self-evaluation, self-dissection through inner monologues, at times his mood was torn very strongly. On the night of witnessing Trang and Hiep together, "Toan trembled... Toan's heart was beating wildly like a horse eating wild grass" [36, 282]. Inside him, there were two people fighting, one said "Don't cause trouble for your friend, he is a close friend" but immediately the other roared "No way, true love is not allowed to be discouraged. Those two people were in Toan's heart, tormenting him until dawn" [36,283]. When hearing Minh's decision to settle abroad, "a pain rose in Toan's heart, struggling like waves of the heart - Toan clenched his teeth to endure the stabbing pain inside. Isn't it enough that our country has suffered so much, and then there are the children who continue to leave the country? Toan went through the war, lost his parents, lost the innocence of childhood in his soul. He thought that after the war, he would lose nothing, but instead he was deprived of his desire to continue studying and was at risk of losing a friend. Why does nature give people the right to live, but at the same time take away their sacred things and torture them like that? [36, 259]. Toan's mood is vividly described, mixed with joy and sadness. When in crowded and bustling places, Toan feels sad because he can't see anyone clearly, can't see himself clearly, in the middle of a crowd he feels lonely, but when there is only one left, he feels like he is always in a pair. "A person is always inside him, always ready to talk, to answer" [36, 119]. Ho Anh Thai was very subtle in describing the extremely subtle changes and also the extremely positive changes in the soul of a young man full of aspirations like Toan. He is the image of a lonely person who has to go through stormy days but still passionately looks towards life, towards the good things of life. The way of describing the character Toan's psychology in a profound way is a process of building and developing in accordance with the internal logic of the character's personality, thereby helping readers understand more about the author's thoughts and assessments of life and people.
In The Man and the Car Running Under the Moonlight, Ho Anh Thai not only focused on describing the psychological developments of positive characters such as Toan, Trang, Hiep... but the writer was also very successful in describing the extremely sophisticated psychological developments taking place in a person with a degenerate personality like the character Khuynh. Khuynh is the image of a person full of ambition and cunning. Living in suffocation due to the tyranny of his wicked wife, Khuynh had to go through complex mental states. Wanting to escape from this suffocating life, he was completely helpless. In front of a cunning person like Dieu, Khuynh became a weak, pitiful person. The suffering and torment that Khuynh had to endure in family life was deeply portrayed by Ho Anh Thai: "Khuynh hated Dieu as much as he hated Sa. That brazenly handsome guy, his face looked like a copy of Khuynh, but his eyes were as sinister and brazen as his mother's... Every time he saw his miserable face, Khuynh felt his humiliation being tormented over and over again. After being bitten by Dieu, Khuynh just wanted to slap and punch Sa in the face" [36,309]. Unable to do anything to take revenge on Dieu, Khuynh felt like there was "a burning hatred inside, as if it was about to burn her body to ashes. Where was that goblin? I had to find a way to tear him apart. Where was that little demon? I had to smash his face. But what had Khuynh done? Khuynh had lost a humiliating game to him... So was Khuynh helpless? Khuynh's life was under their control, allowing them to torture her, to destroy her happiness" [36, 351-352]. At the peak of her anger, seeing Duc's starling, Khuynh became confused and imagined it to be Dieu. "The one who had poisoned Khuynh for decades, the one Khuynh hated the most, has appeared. Are you still so arrogant and smug? Are you still so happy and carefree?" [36, 35]. Khuynh took out her gun and shot the starling to death. But "even though she had gotten her revenge, she had shot the starling, but Khuynh did not feel relieved at all. Was there something wrong here?" [36,.356]. Khuynh was in pain because all this time she had been mistaken, had made a big mistake, had committed a crime because she "shot at the target, had unjustly killed many people".
innocent creatures. Their vengeful souls took revenge on Khuynh” [36,356]. Khuynh realized his miserable state “Khuynh no longer had enough strength to scream, smash and destroy anything. Even more so because they came from his blood” [36, 357]. Khuynh became soulless, lost all sense of self-control, rushed out of the house “running on the road with water up to his knees” and “Now Khuynh did not need to maintain his position, rank, everything was stripped away. Before Khuynh’s eyes were only the woman with the slashed face and the house with the hot water bath” [36,360].
Through describing and analyzing the psychological developments of Toan and Khuynh, Ho Anh Thai wanted to reflect a contrasting picture between the light and dark sides of the two souls. Toan represents a sensitive, pure, rational soul, while Khuynh is full of ambition and lust. The ambition has caused Khuynh to fall into a state of extreme distress. Khuynh does not have enough reason and strength to overcome his personal ambitions, so he was defeated by those base desires. When he realized it, he was empty-handed, power was lost, family happiness was gone, it was too late to start over, Khuynh only clung to "a kind of late-season love with a woman whose face was crumpled because of being slashed", besides, there was nothing more to promise him ahead. Everything was empty. And there was no more opportunity and time" [36, 358]. By creating the image of Khuynh with a tragic ending, Ho Anh Thai wants to warn everyone to stay away from and overcome base desires to preserve happiness and personality. It can be seen that when describing and analyzing psychological developments, Ho Anh Thai often puts his characters in a difficult, desperate, and tragic situation so that the characters can think and act, thereby revealing their personalities and moods. Each event entails a series of thoughts and painful torments of the character. Expressing the character's inner development is an artistic method that Ho Anh Thai uses flexibly, richly and effectively to create a character portrait that focuses more on his inner life than his actions.
Ta Duy Anh is a writer with many new and unique creations, especially the ability to successfully create two types of characters: the seeker and the repentant character.
These two types of characters are both introspective characters, so the author uses the technique of internal monologue as an effective artistic technique to portray the psychology and personality of the character. We often encounter long pages of internal monologue in Ta Duy Anh's novels. Lao Kho in the novel of the same name was subjected to intense mental torture by Ta Duy Anh. In a life full of upheavals and filled with many tragedies of fate, Lao Kho has never seen himself so clearly in the face of his inner self. Sitting silently and looking at himself clearly, Lao Kho sees that his life is meaningless, he has not done anything in his whole life. Lao Kho has a naive belief in life and people, he loves the life that he has devoted his whole life to, to build, to cultivate, but the reality is contrary to what he wishes: "One day, while drinking, Lao Kho suddenly discovered that most of the things he did in his life had results contrary to his intentions" [1,7]. On his journey to find the truth, old Kho is a lonely man, he alone fights against a hostile family, a dark and ignorant Dong village. There are times when he wins but there are also times when he encounters disastrous defeats. He is lonely. He is a man who lives by reason, he hates memories and curses reminiscing but it is his turbulent life that pushes him to the things he hates. Old Kho lives on the glorious past, he recalls memories and realizes his bitterness in the present. That is the beginning of the spiritual crisis that old Kho has to endure throughout his life.
The special feature in Ta Duy Anh's novels is that he often uses internal monologues through dreams and nightmares. The author often puts characters in terrible delirium so that the characters themselves can reveal their psychology and personality, and judge themselves. At the beginning of the novel Lao Kho , the main character is brought to court for slander, but by the end of the work, Lao Kho is judged by the court of conscience, and he must receive a terrible punishment. In his dreams, he bravely looks straight into his heart, into the darkest and deepest places to find
found out the real cause of the changes in his life. Perhaps only when facing himself, he realized his true nature, he was too rational, too strict, conservative, and rigid. He was the one who ruined his life and harmed others, so that later he had to honestly confess that he was a miserable, stupid man. Through the inner monologue, the character of Lao Kho appeared with both good and bad sides, both strength and weakness in his soul. The process of struggling to find the true value of life consumed his entire life.
The mother character in the novel The Repentant Angel by Ta Duy Anh also goes through a process of persistent, silent inner monologue. Hearing the heartbreaking stories from the lives around her, the mother increasingly understands the torment of having once rejected her own blood. By the end of the story, through the inner monologue, we truly understand the psychological developments, the process of struggling with herself to overcome the difficulties of life in her: “I have no more chances - she is right. Not losing hope means not losing anything. Can't my life, my husband's life not continue. No, I will never accept such an unjust judgment. I must fight to the end - life cannot stop. It must continue strong, beautiful, meaningful, even when I am no longer in this world. My child, please give me a chance to repent for the time I rejected you” [3,89].
The inner monologue is expressed by Ta Duy Anh as the natural stream of consciousness of the character, including both consciousness and unconsciousness, both illusions and fantasies intertwined, replacing each other with unexpected turns. That is the case of Lao Kho and Di tim nhan cach . The monologue and dialogue in the minds of Lao Kho, Chu Quy, and Dr. N are endless and chaotic like the chaos of life, the mystery of spirituality. The terrible dreams, the strange illusions, associations, the overlapping images of the past, of the enemy, the obsessions about "him" in Chu Quy's mind sometimes make him fall into fits of
delirium, mental crises that seem impossible to escape. All the broken pieces put together, immersed in the confused stream of consciousness help Ta Duy Anh deeply depict the mental state - the breakdown of an entire generation.
Among Ta Duy Anh's three novels, Looking for Characters is the one that skillfully uses the stream of consciousness technique. Chu Quy, Dr. N has actions that to many people are strange and difficult to understand. Chu Quy spent his whole life doing a useless thing, collecting deaths, ways of dying, and the strangest action in his life was killing his wife and committing suicide. Why was Chu Quy immersed in paranoia, haunted by fears about the past? Why did Dr. N have to kill his wife and commit suicide when he had everything, a glorious career and a happy family? The novel haunts us with questions of why and seems to be haunted by a certain person who exists right before our eyes, forcing us to live and fight with ourselves to survive as a true human being. Perhaps that is what Ta Duy Anh wants from readers when reading this work in particular and his other works in general.
* The haunting of the spiritual world
Spirituality is a recurring issue in the works of Ma Van Khang, Ta Duy Anh, Ho Anh Thai, contributing significantly to reflecting the psychology of the characters. In the works of these writers, the spiritual world is explored with different levels and angles. Dreams, the revival of memories, hidden psychological troubles, moments of telepathy between the living and the dead, between one person and another are vividly recreated by the writers.
In Ma Van Khang's works, characters who live intensely with their inner self appear quite often. Cu Duy's grandmother in " Coi cut" lives in poverty and misery. When she is in dire straits, she often burns incense and prays for her husband. This gives her more strength and faith to fulfill her responsibilities.