The Art of Using Strong Verbs to Create a Special Impression

The heartless Cao To Quay, she " threw her head on him and cried " then went home to confess to his wife Giang Gau and that woman also "fell down crying ". Sometimes it was the cry of an old woman like the mother of her grandchild. Every time Lam San was mentioned, she often "wiped away her tears" because she loved Lam San... Those were also the tears in Broken Heart of the character Nang " Her tears fell down her cheeks". Or " the silent tears flowed" of the character Thuan in Black Widow . And the painful cries of the women in The Remnant of the Laughing Forest , when " all four girls hugged each other and cried bitterly ", "the silent cries". The writer was also very delicate when describing the cries of abnormal people. That is the cry of the disabled – the cry of the blind man in Virgin Lips : “crying without tears ”, because the blind man’s “ tears just crawl back into his chest and choke him ”...

In her opinion, Vo Thi Hao believes that each person living in this life contains a different fate, some are lucky, some are unlucky. Therefore, when building characters, the writer pays attention to describing appearance and sees each figure as containing mysteries about life. Each character, each fate and in the world of Vo Thi Hao's characters, their figures have partly revealed their fate.

3.2.2 The art of psychological description

In Vo Thi Hao's short stories, it is easy to see that the plot often has few details and events, while people's thoughts about those events are very focused. The reality of life is rarely described directly as it is, but is refracted through the writer's lens. Through the characters, through the thoughts and worries, the complex developments in the characters' inner world, the writer sends his thoughts about today's complicated life.

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Vo Thi Hao is a very subtle writer in the process of describing the emotional states and psychological changes of the characters. Depending on each character as well as the expression of different emotional states, the writer uses different ways of description. Sometimes the writer uses the method of going deep into the psychology of the characters, especially the disabled, to describe. Although they are people who are not lucky in appearance, they still have sad and happy emotions, have desires and dreams like normal people. In Lan Moi Dong Trinh , the character Hang also wishes to be loved with a pure love: " Every time it rains, she steps outside, longing for a light touch on her lips, to feel that she is also kissed, the sweet kisses of her other half" . Like Hang, Tam in Blood of the Leaves also felt the pain of a disabled person, because " the Creator was drunk when he created me " and every time there were guests at home " I often found an excuse to avoid him", when he passed the university entrance exam with honors but was not accepted because of his physical defect. Many times Tam " prayed for his own death ". But ironically, the Creator played a joke on him, blowing into that disabled shell a soul capable of recognizing his own pain, " Her eyes were filled with tears, she needed sweet words of love like she needed water" . That's why Tam nurtured an illusion about a giant guy who saved her, holding her back to life through the letters of Tuan, Huan, and Hoang. But then she realized that she needed to return to her own world, because "your world is too big, and my world is too small. I have to return to my own world". Vo Thi Hao has gone deep into the soul of the disabled to describe the desire to live a very normal life, the emotions, wishes, and love of pure and holy souls. There are also torments and poignancy about physical pain and disability.

In The Earthly Anchor , the writer used the art of direct psychological description with the character's inner monologues to let the character express his emotional state objectively: " A person with a few words in his head would listen to a crazy woman like that? Then I'm crazy too". And many times the writer indirectly expressed the character's emotions, in order to express the secret, unspeakable feelings, as a sympathy for the suffering they had to endure: " She suddenly burst into tears and hugged his head, like a mother protecting her son... She held that face in her arms and felt her heart break with pity" . Thus, with Vo Thi Hao to express the character's inner self, the writer used many different methods, sometimes letting the character express herself directly through monologue language, sometimes indirectly expressing the character's feelings through the narrator's language.

In the short stories of Vo Thi Hao, the writer dedicated a solemn part to women. In many characters, they have to experience ups and downs as well as feel the pain in life and love. The writer deeply reveals the mood with many levels, sometimes it is torment, regret like Hanh in The sound of the night crane . Hanh always lives in the obsession with the unfortunate fate of her lonely fate in her heart, so she is always lonely and cold. She always feels that men are liars and traitors, so she is afraid to love because she has a " disabled heart ". Therefore, after a failure, broken love, she did not believe that she would have true happiness in life. Hanh is always tormented by regret in her love with Thu, because deep in her heart, that woman always longs for true love: "I should have waited, but I ran away. Why don't I try one more time. I need to be comforted, to be protected. Why do we have to make ourselves suffer?.....Why don't we throw away this cold outfit? Why don't we put our heads on your chest?

"You, say that I'm tired, that I want to cry...no matter what tomorrow brings, you're still the man I need", the conflict always tearing her apart because Hanh just wants to " love like that! keep it almost like keeping a beautiful illusion", because she is afraid that life will make it vulgar, trivial. That is the state of mind of delicate, sensitive people in love, always having distance in love, and then having to fall into a lonely state " tasting the feelings of a bird far from home even though winter has not come but the cold has nibbled at the skin ". In Black Widow , the character Thuan has experienced many love affairs, has suffered because of men and she herself has made many men suffer because of her more than once. Her heart has almost become callous because she has witnessed many miserable lives of people around her: " her mother married a mean husband, her sister got pregnant with a playboy. The neighbor woman worked hard to take care of her husband but was still beaten by him. And to avenge the suffering and unfortunate women, Thuan " only wanted to experience the feeling of flirting with a man, and when he was hypnotized, he would raise his head and tiptoe away without looking back" . But ironically, although she had trained herself to live without a man, in front of Dang, the young woman tried to close her heart but could not. She was always shy and happy with Dang, but without Dang, she felt life was meaningless, empty and bland. The two people were attached to each other with a love that was almost painful, that love that foreshadowed many sorrows was always the fire that warmed their single life. In times of fatigue, Thuan sought out Dang as a source of comfort, she leaned on his shoulder: "I'm so tired, can I lean on you?", she was cautious and careful with each step in her love for Dang. But life did not smile on her "the men who loved her were not lucky". Then she burst into tears in pain when she heard the news about the plane returning to Finland.

had an accident. She tried to calm herself down with the belief that he could not die . “How could the man she loved die?” And tomorrow she would go to Thuy Tien cave, where the memories of the two of them were engraved. “ If flood water and mud blurred it, she would re-engrave it. If people had burned it with lime, she would engrave another line. The day after tomorrow she would sew a pink nightgown to wait for him.” That was the belief and hope for happiness that Thuan had painstakingly built in the middle of life.

Vo Thi Hao's art of describing the characters' psychology is often expressed very clearly in the inner monologues and obsessions of the characters. Because it is at that time that the characters face themselves, they reveal their thoughts, torments, and concerns with their truest emotional states. In The Sea of Salvation, the soldier in the war not only suffers physical pain but also loses love and happiness. He is extremely miserable and angry at the harsh reality because children with different fathers are present in his house. He fled from his fellow countrymen and his beloved wife on the island of lights. It was on the island of lights that he had time to look back at all the people in the war, including his wife and children. He realized that the war had distorted the shape and moral standards of human life. " Why keep it, my dear?" Tomorrow will surely die..”, those were the words of the soldiers before going to battle and also in “The hasty sexual intercourses with the smell of death before going into the muzzle of the gun of death” gave birth to “children with different fathers” . Especially when on the island appeared a prostitute who was about to die of illness and hunger, he refused and indirectly killed a person… Realizing all the ways of his dealings with people, he regretted thinking about “ his game” . He remembered his poor wife, a victim of the war, the war that made the whole village white with only old men and children, all for the battlefield. Pushing women to

The burden should have been on men, “ while women were created to be beautiful vines that wrap gracefully around the great tree: Man” , and he realized it all...

Thus, along with the success in the art of describing physical appearance is the success in the art of describing the psychology of Vo Thi Hao's characters. These artistic features have clearly depicted the world of characters in her works and it is they that have created the identity of Vo Thi Hao's pen.

3.3. The art of using language

In artistic creation in general and literary creation in particular, language plays the role of material, a means of expression that is characteristic of literature. “ Language is the first element that a writer uses in the process of preparing and creating a work; it is also the element that first appears in the reader's contact with the work” [9]

As a genre closely associated with social changes, the language in short stories after the renovation, in addition to its inherent characteristics, also bears the creative imprint of each individual, and bears the mark of a period of strong literary development.

In line with the flow of literature in the renovation period, the language in Vo Thi Hao's short stories contributed to perfecting the work as well as affirming the writer's creative personality.

3.3.1. The art of using strong verbs to create a special impression

In Vo Thi Hao's works, especially in the short story genre, the writer often uses strong verbs to create a different feeling in her works. Although she writes about various complicated issues of life, she always creates a difference in her works through the use of strong verbs. According to the Vietnamese Dictionary edited by Hoang Phe (1998), a verb is "a word that expresses an action, state or process". In short stories

In her work, Vo Thi Hao uses verbs as a consequence of the actions that the characters perform, but sometimes the actions happen naturally or are created by some supernatural force. In each different topic, the writer uses verbs to express the actions of the characters and conveys her thoughts about life and people.

In the short story about the topic of personal life, the writer mentioned many issues of current life, the time of peaceful life with noble and base temptations, the problems of fate, human misfortune in life as well as love and happiness. Expressing that issue, the writer used verbs as valuable highlights to describe the nature of things, events, and people.

The war is over, but what remains is not only physical pain but more than that, the mental pain that people have to endure. The character of the soldier in The Sea of Salvation is such a person. The war took away a part of his body but also took away his love and happiness. The description of the attitude of his wife welcoming him after many days of separation is very heavy: " his wife was haggard, her upper body leaning towards him, but her legs seemed to be buried in the corner of the house, staring at him and then collapsing to the ground, bursting into tears" , and welcoming him were also little children " And three children ran over, grabbing the splendid preparation on the backpack lid. But before his fierce glare , they faltered , sneaking into a corner" . Witnessing those scenes, he was extremely painful, " He collapsed to the floor, vomiting out clear water,

He shook off his backpack and walked away, leaving behind the cries of his wife and only child, who did not know that they had just had a father, and in a flash, they would no longer have a father; along with the children's cries of fighting over dolls . When on the island of lights, he had time to realize all the causes and sufferings that his wife and children had to endure. "Every time he cried, his heart softened a little . "

He decided to return to his wife and children, who had suffered a lot. The writer used a series of verbs such as bury, run, shake, vomit, cry … to describe human pain.

Also writing about war, in The Remnant of the Laughing Forest, the writer used a series of figurative verbs to describe the loss and pain of people: “ Four young girls but their hair was only a bunch of ragged hair. The brackish black-green stream water gradually stripped their hair” . “ Near the warehouse guardhouse, suddenly “ soất ”, then “ huỵch” - it seemed like a white gibbon had just jumped down from the guardhouse and hidden in the leaves. The three people dispersed, one person crawled into the bushes to chase the gibbon. He was looking around in bewilderment when “ phốc ” - a pair of hands from somewhere grabbed his neck tightly …..his face was listless and he was throwing his head back laughing loudly” . It was also a painful image of soldiers, young female volunteers who sacrificed themselves in many different positions: “ A bitter bayonet had pierced one side of Tham’s chest ”. And Huan in his dying moments "Tuan's eyes were lost in the pain .

died . He writhed , clawing at a handful of dirt and gravel to shove into his mouth . In reality, when facing dangers on the battlefield, no matter how "experienced" a soldier is, he cannot avoid panic. To describe that feeling, the author chose a series of strong verbs: " I screamed in terror and ran away . After running a few dozen steps, I stumbled into a bush, only then did I suddenly wake up and run away.

ran back, rushed forward, held Tuan in his arms, and shook and called out repeatedly " (Blood of the leaves).

Through the system of verbs that the writer uses, he has created indelible impressions in the reader's mind. Whether writing about a complicated reality or describing the colorful life of a character, strong verbs have helped the writer express his artistic ideas correctly on each page of his writing.

The worldly and private life in Vo Thi Hao's works are not only about losses during and after the war, but also about miserable lives.

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