In this story, Ta Duy Anh showed us the degradation of humans in modern society, and the painful death of creatures that were not yet human.
The novel Lao Kho by Ta Duy Anh also has a unique fragmented plot structure. The novel is divided into two relatively independent parts. The first part is "The main story instead of an introduction" which is the thoughts and experiences that Lao Kho draws from his own tumultuous and difficult life. The second part is the side stories divided into 20 chapters. Chapter I is called "Reappearance from the past". Chapter II is: "The love story of Lao Kho". Chapter III is: "The arrangement of fate". Chapter IV is: "Predestined disaster". Chapter V is: "Collapse and resurrection". Chapter VI is: "Witnesses of the times". Chapter VII is: "Revenge". Chapter VIII is: "Angels and demons". Chapter IX is: “Facing the Ghost”… If we look at the titles of the chapters, we can easily see that each chapter seems to have completely presented an event, we can start reading from any chapter and still grasp the content of the work relatively completely. Besides the stream of consciousness plot, Finding the Character by Ta Duy Anh also combines a fragmented - assembled plot. The novel consists of 14 chapters, each chapter has a different content revolving around the lives of many characters. The work is a message sent to everyone with a passionate call: Face the truth, instead of cowardly bowing your head and hiding from fear and ignorance, do not complain or run away from the “devil”.
3.1.5. Stream of consciousness plot
The stream of consciousness plot is a typical plot of the modern narrative of the 20th century.
XX. The fulcrum for telling is the vast inner world with countless past repressions and thoughts, overlapping reality.
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In Search of Character is a novel written in a stream of consciousness manner, the character's mood is clearly revealed through streams of consciousness, fragments of mood. The author skillfully uses the technique of simultaneous time. The character of the person
The first-person narrator recalls his past and recounts the events. The past and present always come together in the character's dreams or nightmares. Through nightmares, we see events in the character's life, even unrelated or not very related events, intertwined with each other by an invisible thread. It is difficult for us to distinguish which events are present and which are past events, and we do not understand what happens in Chu Quy's dreams. Those events are like a shadow covering his life, making it impossible for him to escape from the dangerous trap. Everything that happens in the present can creep into Chu Quy's head, and then when night falls or when he encounters similar situations, they combine to torment him in his nightmares. Chu Quy is immersed in dreams, chasing the past to find his identity and origin, and at the same time repenting for the sins he has committed. The character Chu Quy is a character full of contradictions, the times of the past and present intertwined to illuminate that.
3.2. The art of character building
3.2.1. Aesthetic category in character building
Aesthetic categories are issues that art has a mission to express at all times. We encounter many phenomena in life and literature that are close to aesthetic categories. Aesthetic categories in art are phenomena rich in the aesthetics of life, aesthetic qualities in art all originate from life. We often consider phenomena that have harmony inside and outside, between content and form as beauty; on the contrary, the outside, form overwhelms the content, the inner emptiness is covered by a flashy appearance, we think of comedy; when the inner life, talent and personality are higher than fate, people face great power with a proud spirit, we think of the sublime and the
noble and strong character failed by the limitations of the times, we think of tragedy.
In the works of Ma Van Khang, Ta Duy Anh, Ho Anh Thai, social life has become an inevitable need that needs to be reflected deeply. Although each author has a different way of building characters, they all express in their works the aesthetic categories of opposition between the ugly and the beautiful, between the good and the evil, between the noble and the base, the tragic and the comic.
In Ma Van Khang's works, beauty is expressed in the character's qualities and talents, which is the beauty of intellectuals with talents and noble qualities such as Tu, Kha, Uncle Thong; it is also the beauty of other ordinary people such as Duy's grandmother, Ms. Quyen, Ms. Dai Bang, Hoan or the beauty that is hidden in the souls of children like little Duy. The category of beauty and ugliness in Ma Van Khang's works is clearly constructed, which is the harmony between the form and personality of the character. Reading Ma Van Khang's works, we can easily see that the writer pays great attention to the correlation between the appearance and personality of the character. People with good-looking, kind-hearted appearances are often people with good temperaments. On the contrary, people with bad temperaments are often people with ugly appearances. Thuat is a person who lacks kindness, as described by the writer: a narrow face like a bird's face, a nose that is rough like the back of a knife. Two cold eyes. A cold face. The face is full of changing lines, restless, slightly arrogant. For ignorant and mean people like Cam, Duong, Lai, the writer depicts in detail and specifically. The writer describes Cam as ignorant and vulgar: Cam is big, bulky, sloppy, writhing, looking miserable. As for Duong, a party cell secretary, a person who is self-righteous and shows off his power, a person who likes titles, achievements, mechanical, passive, fake, the author describes Duong's face as a product of a process of cultivation that has reached harmony, peace, and freedom - the most distinctive demeanor of someone who understands himself and believes in his collective destiny. The great mandarin Lai - the city party committee secretary, an ignorant, mean, uncultured person
The author's description of his appearance somewhat reflects his personality and nature: He was as big as a guardian in a temple, but his upper body was longer than his lower body, his ears were flat, and his eyes were fierce. He did not have a single smile on his lips as thick as clay.
Pho, Duc, and Hien in "Upstream of Flood" are a trio, typical portraits in which Ma Van Khang used the art of physical description. Pho's face is cold, round like a tray, the hair above the fontanel is thin and ragged, and Pho's chin is drooping. Pho's nose is big and round, and Pho's mouth is flat, like a catfish's mouth. Pho's eyes have dark circles, the after-effects of insomnia and kidney failure. Pho's appearance exudes an unpredictable personality: both stupid and cunning, cold and lonely, and sinister. Duc and Hien are also described by the author to highlight their evil and despicable demeanor and character: "Duc sits on Pho's left, one meter and seventy tall, neither fat nor thin, with a well-proportioned head, body, legs, and arms. The characteristic appearance is concentrated in the face full of fat, stubborn with a black mole under the nose, making the smile as naive as that of a calf. In contrast to Duc, Hien sitting on Pho's right, is small, bony, angular, with a narrow face, deep eyes, and a pointed chin. With those portraits, that face, that appearance, the reader can imagine the personality and nature of an uneducated, incompetent person". [26]
In Ma Van Khang's works, the sublime is built by the author in a bold way. That is the sublime beauty in the personality of people, especially intellectuals. That is the image of noble people who dare to face the challenges of life, overcome difficulties and obstacles, overcome fate to keep their noble personality intact like the characters Tu, Kha, and Uncle Thong. But the lives of those noble people become tragic when they have to live under the restraint of fate and the times.
In Ta Duy Anh's works, good and bad; good and evil are expressed in a fragile boundary. His characters do not have any appearance, the ugly ones are extremely ugly like old Kho, old Phung; the beautiful ones are as pretty as flowers, but the human nature in his works is always on the line.
the boundary between good and evil. Ta Duy Anh's characters are always placed in a state of struggle between good and bad. Building characters in the struggle to find themselves like Chu Quy, Dr. N, Lao Kho..., he affirms that the evil that reigns in humans is greed, lies, cowardice; those are the evil spirits that lurk and harm the soul of every human being.
Ho Anh Thai is a very profound author in his view of modern people. His characters are diverse, rich, and have depth of soul. Like Ma Van Khang, in Ho Anh Thai's works we also encounter contrasting structures between the ugly and the beautiful. In modern novels, we encounter beautiful images such as Toan, Trang, Hiep. They are young people returning in peace after the war of resistance against the US, with talent and strong passion to build a new life for their homeland; with sensitive souls yearning for love. Besides those good people, Ho Anh Thai also built a system of characters with bad personalities such as the couple Khuynh - Dieu in The Man and the Car Running Under the Moonlight ; young people who love to play and debauch like Coc, Bop, Phu, Yen Thanh in The Human Realm Rings the End of the World , or that is also the image of a chaotic society in Eleven and One Nights .
Thus, authors often build a system of characters according to two positive and negative lines to promote the beauty and criticize the ugliness that still exists in each person and in life. Along with building opposing categories, authors also pay attention to creating a tense rhythm, creating tension in the story about the painful life between contradictions to clearly express the main idea.
3.2.2. Fiction, imagination - an effective artistic technique in expressing critical inspiration
In every authentic literary work, artistic techniques are used skillfully and sharply, bringing about high expressive effectiveness.
The strong critical art in the works of Ma Van Khang, Ta Duy Anh, Ho Anh Thai is a smooth combination of artistic techniques that attract readers. It is a combination of fictional and symbolic art, sometimes it is allegorical and legendary art.
Fiction is a method of building typical images through the creation of new values, new elements such as events, scenes, characters in a work according to the author's imagination. Literature and art originate from life but are not original copies. From real materials, artists organize, mold, and create vivid artistic images. Ma Van Khang, Ta Duy Anh, and Ho Anh Thai are authors with a very keen eye in building character images. The authors have used fictional art very effectively in exaggerating, exaggerating, and imagining to build characters with high definition in personality. Thanks to this way of organizing and building characters, it helps readers have a more multi-dimensional perception of the character's nature. If only relying on purely realistic materials without fictional imagination, Ma Van Khang could not have successfully built the character Tu with the bright spiritual beauty of a talented teacher, built the character Khiem with a rich spiritual life, the character Duy with a vast emotional world as we have seen. The fictional imagination of Ma Van Khang is as gentle as it is for Ho Anh Thai and Ta Duy Anh, the imagination becomes that much more breakthrough. The writers have used allegory and myth in a transformative way to create strong imagination in each work. The presence of myth allows the writer to look deeper into the world of characters and attract readers. The repentant angel of Ta Duy Anh, The human world rings the apocalypse bell of Ho Anh Thai have brought readers many new emotions about a harsh and complex reality through imaginative stories. The author's use of legendary motifs has given readers vivid realistic approaches to images that carry
highly metaphorical. The repentant angel of Ta Duy Anh has created a unique situation that few people can expect, which is the situation of a baby in the womb contemplating life. It is a situation that contains Ta Duy Anh's great imagination. To let a child who is still a tiny creature who has never been exposed to the reality of life but is a person with a delicate view of the developments of life, that is the intention in building the ideology of Ta Duy Anh's work. The writer wants to speak up to warn people to be responsible for their actions, to know how to balance between pleasure and responsibility in a person. The use of legendary writing style has made readers feel the liveliness of life through the liveliness of art, seeing the nature of imaginative art is to turn reality into fantasy without losing authenticity.
Besides the allegorical and mythological writing style, Ho Anh Thai also uses the symbolic writing style in a new way. The symbolic writing style is used by Ho Anh Thai to increase the quality, meaning and fascination of the work. In Ho Anh Thai's novels, symbolic colors often appear through details that are different from the usual logic of life. The character Mai Trung in The World of the Dead appears as an angel with supernatural powers to punish evil. But strangely, evil people are afraid when they see her, but those who love her cannot be close to her. Mai Trung is the embodiment of goodness, the presence of this character has effectively contributed to revealing the theme of the work: promoting the power of goodness in the fight against evil and advocating the dissolution of hatred. The symbolic writing style has brought the ability to create polysemy in the work, through which the ideological content of the work is expressed in a deeper and more multi-layered way.
3.2.3. The art of portraying the character's inner thoughts
Portraying the character's inner self is an important artistic technique in character building in the works of Ma Van Khang, Ta Duy Anh, and Ho Anh.
Thai. Thanks to the portrayal of the character's inner self, the character's diverse and complex psychological journey is revealed in depth. When exploring the character's deep inner world, writers often pay attention to the character's personality and every change in the character's inner life in order to discover the character's psychological reaction to the reality of life.
With his keen observation, Ma Van Khang was very successful in portraying the inner world of the characters. Before 1975, the writer was more interested in the actions than the inner world of the characters, the characters' psychology was simple and there was little internal struggle. After 1975, especially in novels about personal life, the writer circulated personalities and paid attention to all possible changes in the inner life of the characters. The writer delved into the inner world of the characters from many angles to discover the mysteries in the characters' souls.
The psychological developments of the characters in Ma Van Khang's works are often associated with objective and subjective events that create different shades of the characters' psychology. In the novel Upstream , the character Khiem always lives in contemplation about his life and his career. As a truly talented person, despite being the director of a cultural center, he was forced into dire circumstances by his colleagues, including those he had helped. Right at the rehearsal meeting for whether his novel Ben Bo would be published or not, he was isolated by people like Director General Pho - who was Khiem's student, Lieu - who owed Khiem a debt of gratitude, and the mean Ty Hoi, who colluded to eliminate him from the director's chair and from the cultural center. Faced with that situation, Khiem was sad but still steadfast, he told himself in front of the crowd: "I am the minority but I am right". Life continued to be difficult, being oppressed at work, plus the blatant betrayal of Thoa - his wife, made Khiem sink into pain and illness. Khiem lived endlessly in family tragedy. When he met