The decadence and boredom in his heart awakened in him the love for his mother that had long since cooled down: “He wanted this morning, when he woke up, his mother, who had cried many times for him, to see again on the porcelain plate a few flowers picked in the morning dew like in the old days. That was the food of an early morning, of the coolness kept in the crevices of the leaves and on the surface of the rainwater…” ( Morning ). That moment of awakening had long been treasured and cherished by Thach Lam.
The short story The Child is a situation that awakens and awakens humanity, the feeling of love in people who are still cruel and ruthless every day in the character Mrs. Ca is the moment of witnessing the happiness of others - even though that person is just a servant serving her. Mrs. Ca vaguely realizes that being rich and full like her is not necessarily happy, her life is still lacking something, more precious and important than wealth... "Something clearly appeared when she looked at the chubby child suckling the full breasts in her mother's bib". Such a late wish but also very precious because in the end, that cruel and arbitrary woman knew she was unhappy, knew how to yearn for something truly humane and feminine.
As the writer Nguyen Tuan commented: Thach Lam's short stories often delve into "moods, feelings, emotions, sensations". His plots are often low in action and drama but rich in "details" and "events" of moods and hearts.
For the novel, the situation of self-conscious characters is also applied by Thach Lam. In New Day, Truong is a young man who chooses a happy life of his own, not following the arrangements of others. He refuses the marriage that both families agree to, falls in love and starts a new family with a young woman from a poor family. Life is miserable, lacking, he has to drop out of school to work to support his wife and children with a very small salary. He longs for the rich life of those around him, hates
current life, cold and deceitful towards his wife and children, feeling regretful for missing out on a marriage with a girl from a wealthy family. But by chance when meeting a rich old friend, he was no longer the poor student who dressed sloppily before, he had become a boastful, fake and arrogant person..., he suddenly awakened to the true happiness of human beings: happiness does not depend on money but on one's own soul. Truong no longer worried about the poverty and did not envy the richer people. He happily accepted a humble life and began to live new days of his life. As a person who experienced life, always thoughtful and profound, Thach
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Lam understands that when people enter the autumn of life, then they will know how to regret and appreciate what they had carelessly thrown away in their previous lives. And then it is too late. Thach Lam does not want that. Because he values life very much, thinking that "just living is precious enough", he wants to live a true human life, right from when he is young so as not to lose the beautiful things in life. However, it is easy to understand why Thach Lam does not criticize or blame character A or B for choosing this way of life and not that way of life.... "Thach Lam's sensitive and delicate heart cannot bear to see people not realizing that the beauty in them is being lost. With a gentle, whispering tone as if telling a story, he wants to awaken people to that situation. Because there are things that are lost and can never be found again, such as: "old loves", "On the other side of the river", "moonlit nights" .... Therefore, every gesture, thought, and action of a person
- Anyone who is inclined towards beauty is respected and supported by Thach Lam. Maybe those are just the quick, short, and subtle moments of awakening of people in a living situation full of worries, resentment, pettiness, and depravity of "small" and "miserable" people, those moments
Such a shining moment is truly meaningful, and Thach Lam, with a heart full of affection and love, exalted and cherished it wholeheartedly." [17;180]
Besides the introverted short stories - "Searching inside, searching for feelings", many of Thach Lam's works have an "extroverted" tendency, in this type of story the sadness seems to emanate from the unfortunate fate, rather than from the emotions and moods of the characters. The author often puts his characters in unfortunate situations, in order to portray the psychology and personality of the characters and highlight the tragedy of their lives. "If in the works of realist writers, criticizing unfortunate situations brings out accusations of society, Thach Lam uses this situation to express his pity and sympathy for each small human life with a deep compassion. Therefore, Thach Lam's stories often leave readers with a gentle feeling, a lingering sadness for the fate of people at the bottom of the old society" [59;74].
In the story Hunger , due to unemployment, Sinh and his wife were pushed into a dead end with no way out. After selling all the furniture in the house, they had to face a harsh, bitter reality: hunger. Mai - Sinh's wife loved her husband and in dire circumstances had to sell herself to buy food to feed her husband. Knowing the work of his wife, whom he had always trusted and loved, Sinh felt miserable and humiliated, "an extremely sad and depressed feeling (...) in his heart, a strange feeling like a knot in his guts". He felt deceived and betrayed. In a fit of anger, Sinh threw all the food his wife had just bought on the ground, and chased Mai out of the house. But after the feeling of pain and depression was the torment of hunger. Despite Sinh's resistance, the feeling of hunger spread throughout his body like "tide rising over the sand". Every time the wind blew, every time he smelled the rich, fatty smell of the marinated meat, the aroma of the golden cake.... Sinh grabbed the pink piece of meat.... Sinh ate hastily, without having time to chew or swallow. He grabbed
He chopped the piece of meat in his hand, greasy and sticky, without thinking, he always put it in his mouth. But after the feeling of hunger passed, the mental pain came and made him feel bored with life. "A vast depression flooded his whole body. Sinh covered his face with both hands, bowed his head and cried bitterly" ( Hunger ).
Because of food - a normal material need of human beings, Sinh lost both self-respect and dignity. This is a manifestation of the hopeless spiritual tragedy of contemporary intellectuals. Hunger reminds us of the story " The Cake" by Nguyen Hong. Although the feelings of the character Nguyen Hong are more cruel, the bitter aftertaste has not reached the depth of the character Thach Lam.
Mother Le's family was in an unfortunate situation where she had to raise her eleven children in "a house as dilapidated as any other. All those people were crowded into a space about the size of two mats, with only one broken bamboo bed. In the cold season, the house was filled with straw, and mother and children slept on it, looking like a dog's nest, with mother and child dogs swarming about" [45;183]. When winter came, in the fields there were only straw stalks left, the ponds dried up, there were no more shrimps or fish to catch, the food source that Mother Le's family relied on was gone. Mother Le's family fell into poverty and deprivation. Unable to bear the sight of her children starving and cold, Mother Le went to the house of a rich man in the village to borrow rice. But the rich man did not give it to them, and his son Phuc even let his dog chase them away. Mother Le had to return home with a wound bleeding profusely. Mother Le had a severe fever, and then passed away.
Thach Lam did not directly describe the actions and cruel face of the ruling class, the tyrants and bullies like the writing style of contemporary writers Nguyen Cong Hoan, Ngo Tat To, Vu Trong Phung, Nam Cao, but gently and discreetly only through the unfortunate situation, the death of Le's mother, but the meaning of denunciation was very deep and profound, at the same time sowing in the heart.
You read a sorrow, a deep sadness.
The story Twice Dead tells the story of Dung. Since childhood, she has had a strangely patient and content personality. When she was born, her parents were poor and had to work hard to provide enough food for Dung's siblings. Dung's mother was busy with business and had no time to take care of her children. Among her siblings, Dung was the thinnest, slovenly and seemed to be unloved and unnoticed by her mother. Even on Tet holidays, her siblings were allowed to wear new clothes to play, while she still had to wear old clothes to work in the kitchen. But in that indifference, Dung was not jealous or complained. Since her mother decided that Dung was about to get married, her mother's attitude towards her changed a lot... When she arrived at her husband's house, Dung had to do hard work, working hard all day. Her husband was just a little boy, didn't know anything, and couldn't comfort her. Her mother-in-law was very cruel to her and her two brothers-in-law always made her get scolded even more. Whenever Dung felt uncomfortable and sat crying, her mother-in-law would nag, “Do it, don’t sit there and sob. There’s no one in my family who plays around, no one who hugs her husband all day.” Dung didn’t know what to do. One day, when the whole family was away, Dung stole some money and went to the train station to buy a train ticket home. But when she got home, Dung suffered even more because her parents didn’t sympathize with her and the next day her mother-in-law came to Dung’s house to take her away. At that time, she only had one dream: death: “She didn’t know when she got to the river. As in a dream, Dung vaguely saw the bridge railing, saw the water flowing. Her mind froze when the cold water hit her face, she felt depressed and faint, saw red blood welling up, then a dark curtain came and covered everything.” Although Dung was eventually saved, she was actually even more miserable, because she realized that she still had to go to her husband’s house, which was nothing more than “dying while living.”
It can be said that Thach Lam's plot is very simple, without many incidents, events, or interesting unexpected details, but the writer mainly focuses on describing and exploiting the psychological states and vibrations in the characters' souls. Thach Lam's stories often revolve around situations that evoke emotions, unfortunate situations, or situations where the characters are self-aware - situations of reflection to move towards good human values in life. That is why Thach Lam's stories are rich in lyrical elements that make readers emotional.
2. 2. Structure .
2.2.1. Structural concept:
Structure is the creation and connection of parts in the composition of a work, the organization and arrangement of elements and materials that form the content of the work on the basis of objective life and in a certain ideological direction. According to Professor Tran Dinh Su: "The most important principle of structure is the principle of organizing the view so that it can perceive the artistic image, as well as express the vibration and evaluation of the work. [59;153]
Structure is an essential element of every work. Structure has the task of contributing to expressing the ideological theme of the work. In literary creative work, the ideological theme can be considered as the goal that the writer aims for in the process of discovering and building the structure. In literary works, there are many structural forms, depending on the object of description and creative style, writers can choose the appropriate structural form to best express the ideological theme of the work.
2.2.2. Psychological structure - typical model of Thach Lam's prose.
Looking back at the works of authors contemporaries of Thach Lam, we can easily see that there are many different structural forms.
Nguyen Cong Hoan has a structure close to drama. The movement of the plot is based on the appearance and formation of contradictory situations and conflicts. The contradictions and conflicts are increasingly pushed to a climax, a peak, and then suddenly resolved, the ideological content of the work is revealed... The structure of Nam Cao's stories often follows the time axis, following the fate of the characters (Chi Pheo, Midnight, Aunt Hao, Eulogy...) or is of a thesis nature (Doi Thua, Song Mon...). In general, Nam Cao's structure "is a stream of sad emotions of prose - everyday life" [18; 367].
As for Thach Lam, the object of reflection is not the fierce class conflicts but the subtle, complex developments of the inner world. Therefore, Thach Lam chose psychological structures in most of his works. In this type of structure, the author relied on the internal movements of the soul, the inner reactions, and the changes in the characters' moods as the basis for organizing the work. All are illuminated from the artistic perspective bearing the writer's subjective mark.
Throughout the story Two Children is the flow of feelings of the character Lien: sadness before the moment of the day's end, the feeling of love and familiarity when encountering the damp smell of the soil, "Lien thinks it is the unique smell of the soil"; the feeling of pity and sympathy for the fates, the ruined lives: the children going back and forth picking up the remaining things of the poor market; the feeling before the living conditions of Ms. Ty's family, Mr. Xam, Mr. Pho Sieu, the crazy old lady Thi; the feeling of "living in the midst of so many unknown distances, like Ms. Ty's small lamp that only lights up a small area of land" after seeing the night train.
The movement of the story follows the development of the emotions and feelings in the character's soul. It is very fragile, small and sometimes vague, difficult to grasp. The structure of the story is like a lyrical poem imbued with
Sadness touches the reader's heart.
The story " The Cold Wind of the First Season" is structured according to the development of the mood of the character Son: those are Son's feelings before the sudden change of nature - the cold of the first season suddenly came in one morning. The surrounding scenery and people all changed, especially Son's feelings about the cold of poor children because they had no clothes to wear. And the feeling of joy and happiness when secretly giving a shirt to a friend from his mother, then the nervousness and fear of being discovered by his mother... The flow of the story follows the very gentle and delicate feelings in the soul of a child - the character of the boy Son brought the reader into the story and experienced the sensitive inner life full of love of the world of children in the work Thach Lam.
Under the shade of magnolia flowers , structured according to the inner nuances of the character Thanh, after years of studying in a province far from home, returns to visit his grandmother, immerses himself in the peaceful and quiet space under the shade of magnolia flowers, lives in the feeling of love and closeness with his grandmother, and is moved by the beauty of the young woman's soul, and then leaves the next day with lingering nostalgia...
The story of the Grocery Girl , the structure of the story follows the development of the character Tam's mood: from the time she was a girl, loving, worrying, responsible for her family, patiently going home every day with a cheap load of goods "the shoulder pole bent down because of the heavy goods, creaking on her small shoulders with the rhythm of her steps" and "the fatigue seemed to disappear when Tam returned home to live in the love of her mother and siblings"; the feeling of worrying about her relatives, not thinking about herself at all. To the feelings, moods of confusion, anxiety piled up after Tam got married, having to raise children, worry about her husband's family life and provide for her siblings' education, Tam no longer thought about herself "For a long time she no longer paid attention to her beauty and did not know that it faded when