Pham Van Dong affirmed: “We need to encourage criticism and have the duty to criticize the bad and incorrect things that still exist in our society, to eliminate them, to destroy them” ( Building a cultural and artistic foundation equal to the stature of our nation and our era , Truth Publishing House, Hanoi, 1979, p. 47). Socialist realist literature has surpassed critical realist literature in its new historical task of affirming the development trend in the direction of progress and victory of new reality.
- the beautiful reality of socialist society. Our socialist realist literature can only truly be a weapon of revolutionary struggle, of struggle for humane ideas when it simultaneously performs well the two tasks of criticism and affirmation as President Ho Chi Minh said, it must "support the righteous and eliminate evil".
Many modern literary authors have struggled day and night, writing many pages of books to truly reflect the complexity and chaos of life. Besides Nguyen Minh Chau and Nguyen Huy Thiep, Ma Van Khang, Ta Duy Anh and Ho Anh Thai are typical authors who write about this topic. Each person has a different story and feeling, but all of them are the pain of humanity when having to witness the harsh reality of life. The decline in the concept of life, the habit of thinking dogmatically, the worship of materialism, the emphasis on power, the depravity, cruelty, and deceit of people... The myriad of pains of life described in the works of Ma Van Khang, Ta Duy Anh, and Ho Anh Thai make us feel more deeply than ever the complexity and multiplicity of daily life today.
Writing is not just pure criticism, completely denying the negative aspects that still exist in society, writing a lot about the bad and evil, but the authors do not lose faith in people and life. The desire to be good and build a beautiful life in the soul of each person is the message that the authors want to send to readers.
1.2. Outstanding issues in the content reflecting the bad in the works of Ma Van Khang, Ta Duy Anh, Ho Anh Thai
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1.2.1. Human beings degenerate because of pursuing materialism and fame and fortune.
Maxim Gorky once said: "literature is anthropology", literature is always concerned with human life, with human fate and has many new discoveries about humans. Literature in general and the works of Ma Van Khang, Ta Duy Anh, Ho Anh Thai in particular are concerned with personal values in daily life. Therefore, besides the superior aspects that should be praised and encouraged by society, it is also necessary to condemn and criticize the shortcomings and loopholes of society that have created conditions for bad and evil to flourish and prevail. One of the painful things that modern literature mentions is the fact that a large number of people are increasingly degenerate and their personalities are degenerating because they are absorbed in pursuing materialism and fame and fortune. In today's life, many "people are becoming mean and mediocre because of material benefits" (Ma Van Khang). When it comes to factors that cause people to fall into a state of personality degeneration, it is impossible not to mention the power of money. Money has the power to control people's material and spiritual lives. Faced with the temptation of money, people do not know how to restrain their greed and easily become slaves to money, leading to personality degeneration.
1.2.1.1. Intellectual character with degenerate personality
Ma Van Khang, Ta Duy Anh and Ho Anh Thai are among the authors who often delve into the topic of modern people's private lives. Through the works of the three writers, we see a multi-dimensional, multi-colored society vividly recreated through the pen of deep humanity, with the depth of thoughts, with a burning desire for a humane, beautiful life. In the works of Ma Van Khang, Ta Duy Anh, Ho Anh Thai, besides the content praising intellectuals with rich qualities and enthusiasm, the authors also focus on building
Therefore, intellectuals with degenerate personalities are those who are called intellectuals but their personalities have been severely destroyed by money and fame. They have taken advantage of their power to cause many hardships and tragedies for talented, kind-hearted people and people with morality in society. What is more regrettable and painful than the degeneration of educated people that originates, has its roots and seeds from personal desires and before the power of material things, the degeneration of intellectuals is a thousand times more terrifying than the degeneration of uneducated people.
Ma Van Khang started his literary career in 1959 with the short story Dead End Street , during the fierce and fierce war of the nation. In each different period of history, Ma Van Khang had different views on people. In Ma Van Khang's epic works, he often wrote with the general emotional flow of revolutionary literature with a clear distinction between two extremes: good - bad, us - enemy, friend - foe. Ma Van Khang's early works mainly praised the new people of the war of national defense with pain, loss but also heroism. His footsteps followed those of writers To Hoai, Nguyen Ngoc, Mac Phi... to affirm the noble values in the souls of the people of the mountains in general and the people of the Northwest in particular. Entering the new period, along with the transformation of the country and the nation, literature also had great changes. If the epic works focus on creating a grand historical picture of a war era with loss and sacrifice but no less heroic of the peoples in the border areas, then the novels of the renovation period of Ma Van Khang often make the readers feel that the writer is in dialogue with life, in dialogue with people, in dialogue with the emotional flows of the characters that he is digging deep, exploring to express the depth of the characters' emotions. The life events in Ma Van Khang's works are life events interwoven with countless unexpected, trivial things. Different from the fierceness in war life, people can clearly identify the boundary between the two extremes of good - bad, white - black, right - wrong of life.
life, in the post-war life, on the surface it seems peaceful but inside it is full of contradictions that have become a persistent internal war present in each person, each fate, each family. It is easy to understand why after the war, people are no longer in a dilemma between life and death but in their souls they always feel unstable and unfamiliar with themselves.
With a soft, gentle but fierce writing style, Ma Van Khang writes about the negative aspects of society, emphasizing the magic of money that has strongly damaged people's will, emotions and personality. Ma Van Khang once affirmed: "A pragmatic lifestyle chasing money is a situation full of germs that makes people infected with a disease that loses their humanity" ( The season of falling leaves in the garden ). Like other writers such as Nguyen Huy Thiep, Le Minh Khue, Ma Van Khang did not hesitate to emphasize the material value of money that strongly affects people's humanity. One of his works that deals with this issue is: A wedding without a marriage certificate (1988), Orphaned in the midst of life (1989) and Against the flow of flood water (1999).
The Wedding Without a Marriage Certificate (1988) was warmly received by readers. Reading this novel, readers can hardly forget the feeling of sorrow and sadness that welled up in their hearts because of the countless twists and turns that befell the fates of each character. This is a work that deeply reflects the image of people being swept away by the whirlwind of material desires in a market economy with countless temptations. They were swept away by trivial desires, whirlwinds of desire in a powerful way. Faced with this reality, many people lost their personality and character.
Ma Van Khang focuses on reflecting the phenomenon of intellectuals being degraded and losing their own value in a vivid way with a poignantly sad mood. The worship of money becomes manifested in the crazy race to chase after trivial material benefits every day. After those
During the years of war, people returned to a peaceful life but also had to face many difficulties. Facing all the temptations of money, if not steadfast, people will naturally lose their direction and fall into the darkness of degeneration. The images of the characters in The Wedding Without a Marriage Certificate show us a colorful picture of the paths that lead the personality of intellectuals into the mud. We see there the figures of Xuyen, Trinh, Quynh, Thanh, and Thay Thuat. For Ma Van Khang, besides praising intellectuals who are raised to become models of value, he also focuses on peeling off the personality of intellectuals who have degenerated and lost their ego. For the cadres, teachers, and students in his description, most of them are immersed in a cold, inhumane lifestyle, a way of living that is indifferent and irresponsible towards their own status. Ma Van Khang realized and sadly exclaimed a heartbreaking truth: Students are now mixed with hooligans. The student Tuan - the son of Secretary Lai, relied on his father's power to be rude and slanderous to his teacher in front of his friends. When teacher Tu punished Tuan with a slap, he said: your life is miserable from now on. Besides, the female student Trinh was originally a good person, but because of illness, abandonment, and poverty, she lost faith in life, became cunning, arrogant, and opportunistic to take revenge on life. As for Xuyen, Tu's wife, due to her excessive desire for material things, she became a woman full of instinct, with a desire to be rich and happy.
The character of Mr. Thuat in The Wedding Without a Marriage Certificate is both pitiful and blameworthy, he is dragged away by material benefits from the noble values of life. Originally a close friend of Tu and Kha, but unlike Tu and Kha who, despite facing the storms of life, still maintain a noble soul, Thuat falls into the tragedy of the whirlwind of petty selfishness. Sad because of his friend's change, Tu always wonders why: "So when did Thuat leave me?" Thuat is a victim of the lies and enticements of Cam and Duong. Being both seduced and secretly abused by Duong and Cam.
In the summer, Thuat gradually sank into a life of lost faith and was dragged into a reckless, arrogant lifestyle. Thuat's talent declined due to the jealousy, scheming, and oppression of Cam and Duong. He became depraved, becoming an "arrogant, contemptuous, and vicious" person [29,266], he "abused the prestige of a good teacher, rushed like crazy into extra classes, escaped from poverty" [29,256-257], and "only aimed to make money to get rich, causing so much bad reputation for the school, ... causing sorrow for many students' families". [29,273]. When he was restrained too much, Thuat lost the value and talent of a good teacher and went crazy in just a short time. It was painful and regrettable for Thuat, from an intellectual with courage, talent, and passion for his profession, he became a victim of a changing and turning world.
Unlike writers of the previous generation, Ta Duy Anh is especially interested in expressing the spiritual state of modern man with all its good and bad aspects. Real life is reflected in his three novels: Lao Kho (1992), Di tim nhan vat (2004), and Thien than tan hoi (2005) with its myriad of negative, contradictory and complex aspects. He has reflected in his works the reality of people treating each other with cruelty, indifference and ingratitude. The lines of thought and questions are raised with endless bitterness: “Does this life exist by pretending? Alas, when will people be able to remove the mask they have to wear even when sleeping with their lovers? To him, Mr. Bui, the district secretary, is just a low-class thief. He stole everything from the mortar to the trust of him and tens of thousands of people” [1,61]. “Someone else dies, not me: some shoeshine boy dies, not my children… Even that thought makes us happy, the happiness of those who stand outside of misfortune, or sometimes we can’t help but click our tongues and say, “Let them die, those scoundrels” [2,6]. “Whoever dies, let them die. If they don’t like to live, what does it have to do with me? Don’t talk about death in the morning, do you hear?” [2,10]. “Murder? So what? What does it have to do with my Miss?
[2,12]. “The female student bent down to take out from her pocket the blue papers that I mentioned. The doctor coldly counted them and put them in his blouse pocket. Horrifyingly, his hand, which had just been covered in blood, was now white again. The blue papers made him feel much more excited, and he whistled a very cheerful tune” [3,18]. It is the indifference, carefreeness, apathy, selfishness of people and the way they treat others for money that lead to unpredictable consequences, and are the source of the tragedies of human destiny.
Finding the Character is a journey to find oneself, to find the essence of man and is a novel with a strong philosophical color, always asking himself and the reader to answer the question: Who am I? Who am I? Am I him? Did he kill me? In this work, the writer has sought new character models suitable for modern man. Modern man is undergoing fundamental and strong changes in both form and nature. The dizzying changes have made us no longer recognize who we are. Some people say that the novel Finding the Character by Ta Duy Anh begins like a detective novel: a person accidentally picks up a newspaper clipping, just a few lines: the victim is a shoeshine boy, about 10-12 years old, stabbed to death by a man on the spot. The perpetrator is tentatively described as a mentally ill person, dressed luxuriously. The hunt is being carried out urgently. With such a questionable opening, the whole work opens with countless questions, the biggest question is still the question of humanity.
The work is written a lot about the character "I" - Chu Quy, but if the character "I" is haunted by hatred, the character Dr. N lives in a situation of searching for personal selfishness, following the direction of "him", an invisible person but present everywhere, wherever people have jealousy and hatred. Some people compare Dr. N in Looking for Characters by Ta Duy Anh and the character Khuynh in The Man and the Car Running Under the Moonlight by Ho Anh Thai to a pair of twin brothers separated to live in two different environments but with similar personalities. Dr. N always lives in two states: one is a peaceful, successful person in a fake life and one is extremely lonely in his thoughts.
thinking about the meaning of life and death in his real life. On the surface, he was a perfect person, “He was the model of a self-made man, a dedicated scientist, a diligent civil servant, a calm and virtuous man. He knew how to adapt to the times to live and devote himself to the common cause - a common and accurate assessment” [2,128]. However, deep in his soul, he was a completely different person. Dr. N, wanting to protect his clean record and maintain his current position, let his younger brother die miserably. N was haunted by his younger brother's death, so he went to the battlefield to seek death, but this was a selfish act. "No one at that time understood my motive for joining the army. I decided to seek death." (2,127) The more Dr. N tormented his conscience, the more he wanted to go to war to die, but that was an act to camouflage his greed and lust. But "ironic", everyone thought that was a brave act and that this man needed to be preserved. Luckily for N, he did not have to go to war but was sent to study abroad. It seemed that it was also a punishment for him, N had to live from one lie to another, and the lie was pushed to the extreme in his relationship with his wife. He realized that he was truly a despicable person, even when sleeping with his wife, he had to live a lie, and then when the clock struck 4am, he entered his office and faced himself with endless torment. Unable to bear the “mental torture” when he entered the office, at 4am one day, Dr. N killed his wife and ended his life, ending a life of loneliness and lies. Writing about the evils in society, Ho Anh Thai is one of the pioneering authors of modern literature. Starting to write when he was a 17-year-old student and becoming famous quite early when he was not yet 20 years old, Ho Anh Thai became one of the youngest members of the Writers’ Association at that time. From his first works, Ho Anh Thai wrote about sharp topics on issues