The Relationship Between the Narrator's Language and the Language of Other Characters

people by its own separation… the wind wakes them up in a way that glides slowly from foot to head, as if a soul, a ghost has just passed by lovingly”, “A few lonely winds have swaggered through the field, creating a funny scene, some straight, some slanted, messy. Waking up in the morning, the wind makes the corn plants that have already bloomed fall down”. Talking about the symbol of Lonely Wind, the writer confided: “Actually, I could write Lonely Sunshine, or Lonely Clouds, but these things are not… cold, when I am talking about the bleak loneliness of life”.

The system of natural images: rivers, fields, and winds with their own unique characteristics have contributed to imbuing Nguyen Ngoc Tu's writings with the essence of the South. And it is this system of symbols that helps the narrator delve deeper into the mysterious and complex world of the human soul, and at the same time it also contributes greatly to creating the profound narrative style of Nguyen Ngoc Tu's short stories.

In addition to describing nature, the narrator in Nguyen Ngoc Tu's short story also describes the character's portrait to contribute to discovering the mysterious inner world of the characters. For example, the portrait of the aunt in The Memory Line is described quite specifically by the narrator: "...she wore a dry areca-colored short-sleeved shirt inside, and an outer Vietnamese traditional dress, thin and patched. Her hair was gray, with a few strands hanging down her face. The wind and frost had made her face dark and wrinkled" [83, pp. 135-136]. Through these descriptions, the narrator shows us the image of a gentle aunt with the hardships and difficulties that the wind and frost of life had imprinted on her face.

It is worth noting that when describing a character, the narrator often focuses on psychologically expressive physical features such as the face, eyes, and smile. That is the face of Sau Tam, “dark and silent like a wooden statue suddenly softened” when he heard San talk about his dream and desire to become a

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the singer and her unfortunate life story ( Because of love ); the “quiet but profound” face of the man in The Anxious Look . In The Past Day , the narrator focuses on describing the faces of each character: Hoa’s plump face “a square face, every edge is on the edge”, Chi’s impressive face with “a wide mouth, a big, flat nose but very beautiful eyes, round eyes”, especially Tiep’s beautiful face but hiding much sadness “a round face, a mouth that always seems to smile, eyes that always seem to ask… her beautiful face exudes a heartbreaking absent-mindedness”. Each face is a fate, a personality, a state of mind…

“The eyes are very expressive”, “the eyes express the person”, reading Nguyen Ngoc Tu’s stories, readers are constantly haunted by the eyes of the characters. Those are the eyes “filled with tears… it is unclear whether they are alum or blood” of the father when he has to witness the scene of thugs competing to humiliate his beloved daughter, the painful eyes “twitching open and closed” of Nuong when she is humiliated ( Endless Field ); “the gentle, slightly wet, tender eyes” of the actress Diep ( Because of love ); the deformed eyes of Luong – a person with many defects on the outside but hidden deep inside is a soul always filled with love: “one eye is torn quickly… people look at him and know, but if he looks back, people think he is looking somewhere else”, “The squinting eye indifferently looks elsewhere, but the remaining eye lights up the fire” (Luong) ; The eyes contain many moods of the child with the tragedy of his parents' separation: "the son with his father's dark and wet eyes followed behind", "his eyes were so sad, it seemed like if he fell in, he would never want to get out", "his eyes were filled with anger, his face was dark", "but the little Wolf did not sleep, there were still two deep, endless holes, brazenly open" (Beautiful Childhood) .

Smiles also contribute to expressing a person's soul and personality. We can never forget Hien's gentle smile in Half a Season : "In return, it smiles."

really sweet, smiling like my mother, like my grandmother, toothless and gentle, as if pouring into my heart. An honest smile”; the smile filled with love and happiness of Hien’s mother in The Old Man : “Every time I watch TV, seeing him flash across the screen, Hien’s mother always smiles very lightly, discreetly and silently. The smile is small but full of love”. There are smiles of happiness but there are also smiles that hide behind it is a hidden sadness. That is the smile that carries the pain and melancholy of Ut Vu in Endless Field : “it is fierce, painful, wild, bitter, cruel. The smile is very long, clinging to my father’s face, making my father’s eyes bulge out a bit, shining as if there are tears”; those are the smiles that carry the sadness of the characters in Diep’s Story : “Diep looked at Giau and smiled sadly, Ma looked at Diep and smiled even more sadly (…). Ma smiled quietly. Smiled sadly”; Hau's "paralyzed smile" when Hau knew that the person who wanted to kill her was the husband she loved (A Dry Heart) . With subtle observation and understanding of the character's psychological life, the narrator, through just a few descriptions, deeply portrayed the changes in the character's inner depths.

From the above analysis, we can see that the descriptive component occupies a fairly high frequency, a rather special position in Nguyen Ngoc Tu's narrative art. Through these descriptions, we can feel the sensitive soul and the subtle, sharp observation ability of the narrator. Describing natural scenery or describing the appearance of the character, the narrator always aims to explore the rich, complex, and mysterious inner world of human beings. It is this descriptive component that has contributed significantly to creating the poetic and lyrical quality of Nguyen Ngoc Tu's short stories.

3.1.2.3. Components of analysis and commentary

The narrator's analysis and commentary in narrative works play a very important role. It helps the narrator shed more light.

The ideological content of the work, more fully and concentratedly reveals one's attitude and evaluation of the character as well as one's philosophy of life, directly expressing what one wants to convey to the reader. With the need to perceive oneself, perceive society, perceive people, comments in contemporary short stories increasingly appear with a dense level. The consciousness of the creative subject is clearly shown in the comments. Nguyen Khai, Bao Ninh, Ho Anh Thai, Nguyen Ngoc Tu are writers who have created their own style with the dense appearance of comments in the narrative language. The large appearance of analysis and comments in the works of writers is not a coincidence. Because the basic function of the narrator in the multifaceted, multifaceted contemporary life is not to go into recreating events and realistic aspects of life but to analyze and explain that life in its depth.

The commentary topics that the narrator in Nguyen Ngoc Tu's short stories often focus on are personal issues, private life, and ways of dealing with others. These are reflections on people and life: "People, from one pain to another" [83, p.12]; "People are like that, they cut us once and then forget, they just talk to make themselves happy, to relieve their sadness, but no one dies, who tells us to sit there and hold the scar with indescribable pain" [88, p.130]; "You notice, people who don't talk often laugh, not because they are happy but to avoid answering" [84, p.108]. In particular, the narrator often comments and reflects on love, on feelings between people: "deep affection is like water in a river, no matter where it flows, no matter where it is cut, it will converge into a stream that flows forever" [84, p.113]; “There are many questions that people spend their whole life answering, for example, “Will you love me until death?”, “At that moment I knew the most beautiful sound in life is the sound of one person saying he loves another” [86, pp.131-150]; “In life, people think that cursing and tearing each other apart is

lost love. If we are indifferent to each other, there is no love at all” [88, p.53]. Sometimes it is a comment on the meaning of life: “what is yours will eventually be yours, what is not yours, don’t fight for it, it’s a waste of effort” [88, p.56]; “like people, when looking at each other, we must look at each other’s good side” [88, p.154].

The narrator's comments show reserve, doubt, and anxiety. It seems that the narrator wants to tell the reader that the comments she makes are not the truth but only what she feels and predicts. She only raises issues for the reader to learn and ponder, and whether it is right or wrong depends on each person's experience and life experience. The narrator's reserve and doubtful attitude is clearly shown through the narrator's use of questioning sentences: "How can life be as one wishes?" [84, p.66]; "Looking back, how can people live as naturally as flowing water and drifting clouds?" [88, p.143]. In the commentary, the narrator often uses phrases that carry the meaning of conjecture, uncertainty, premonition, and doubt such as: sometimes, seemingly, perhaps, often, surely because: “Just like in romantic movies, sometimes people tearfully separate from their loved ones because of love” [84, p.14]; “Sometimes people like to talk about this and that to disturb the peaceful, carefree life…” [84, p.97]; “But sometimes it needs its mother to ask a few questions… When I ask something, it smiles, shyly, as if those stories are only told to one’s mother” [84, p.122]; “Perhaps, people always regret things that are not complete” [84, p.151]; “Usually, men do not remember deeply and love deeply like women” [84, p.145]. The way of commenting is not rigid, not “high-minded”, but very soft and flexible, which makes the narrator’s comments in Nguyen Ngoc Tu’s short stories attractive and appealing. Because they are the narrator’s very genuine thoughts and feelings. It does not impose on the reader but goes into the reader’s heart in a gentle, natural, and profound way.

It can be affirmed that the skillful and flexible combination of three components: narration, description and analysis and commentary is one of the factors that create the unique and attractive features of the narrator's language in Nguyen Ngoc Tu's works. Thanks to that, the language in her writings is both lyrical and philosophical, and has the ability to attract readers to think and discuss.

3.1.3. The relationship between the narrator's language and the language of other characters

The distinction between the language of the narrator and the language of other characters is only relative. Because in some cases, these two types of language are mixed together and are difficult to separate. Reading Nguyen Ngoc Tu's short stories, we see that the language of the narrator often dominates both in quantity and in the functions of narration, description, and expression. To prove this, we rely on a number of bases:

Firstly, the language of other characters in Nguyen Ngoc Tu's short stories is mainly internal monologue. But one thing that is easy to notice is that the internal monologue of Nguyen Ngoc Tu's character is very little in the traditional style.

– inner monologues in which there is a clear separation between the narrator’s narration and the character’s description of his thoughts, such as: He thought: “…” or It said to itself: “…”. In the inner monologues in Nguyen Ngoc Tu’s short stories, there is a large part that we can hardly distinguish whether they are the narrator’s or the character’s words. They blur together to form semi-direct speech: “The old man sounds so disappointed, what more do you want, how much more do you want, how many years of injustice will it take to be enough?” [88, p.129]; “San has lived like that for so long that he has gotten used to it. No passion, no expectations for anything, no distant dreams, no one to trust or love. San feels that he does not rely on anyone to live and does not live for anyone” [84, p.139]. And we still classify these words as the narrator’s narration – a two-voice narration.

Second, the dialogue language of other characters is generally “overshadowed” by the narrator's language:

In Nguyen Ngoc Tu's short stories, the dialogue of the characters accounts for a small proportion and is quite short. Her characters often have a common characteristic of thinking a lot, speaking little, and doing little. Most of her short stories only have three or four dialogues, and each dialogue usually consists of only three or four turns of speech. For example, the story Feeling on the Rope has 324 lines, but only 8 lines of dialogue, accounting for nearly 2.5%; the story Grave of the Wind has 118 lines, of which only 3 lines of dialogue, accounting for 2.5%. The story Cai oi has 224 lines, but only 4 lines of dialogue, accounting for 1.7%. In these few dialogues, there are dialogues that only consist of one turn of speech, only giving and not responding, so if they are converted into indirect speech mixed into the narrator's narration, it will not harm the overall structure of the text. For example, Diem Thuong's words to Than: "Living as a parasite and dragging along the whole herd". Or what Than said to Diem Thuong about old man Nam Nho: "Mr. Nam, my friend. Very cute" [83, p.7].

There are also many dialogues in which the give-and-take relationship is very loose, indifferent or disjointed. For example, the dialogue between the man who raises ducks in the fields and the woman in The Anxious Look :

- “This morning I met my friend, he just brought a flock of ducks from the farm.

I asked, heard that An Binh harvester is there.

- Brother Two

He stepped down and pushed the coconut husks into the furnace. The coconut fiber was fine, burned brightly, then went out.

- The one named Sinh has to kiss Miss Ut? Oh, Sinh, he is also harvesting there, Miss Ut.

- Brother!

She dropped the towel and cried out in shock.

- The train from the commune leaves for the farm at five o'clock, and passes by here, probably around six thirty. Try to catch that train. If you miss it until the next day, I'm afraid they'll move the fields again, and it'll be very hard to make money. Think about it, Aunt Ut (...)

- Brother, why do you think so?

- I know you still have feelings for him. When you go there, ask him about the whole story. If you say it out of love, we will stay, who knows what kind of suffering he has…”[83, pp.62-63]. Here, it is almost only Mr. Hai’s words, the character “Miss Ut” only responds by calling his name. This dialogue with a loose exchange relationship has a special meaning in expressing the psychology and private thoughts of each person. Mr. Hai seems to want to quickly say what needs to be said to hide his true feelings. As for the woman, she has a dialogue, a reply, but it is only the two words “Anh Hai”, containing choked emotions, gratitude towards the person she loves.

are talking.

There are some dialogues that do not follow the rule of turn-taking (intentionally). For example, the dialogue between a woman and her lover in A Date has 11 turns, but 8 of them are from the woman, and only 3 are from the man:

- “Come here to tell you, I… can't… There's a storm…

- Yes, the storm…

- I was afraid you would wait so I came out to tell you. There really is a storm, brother.

- People will see us…

- People will think this and that...

- Come on, honey. We'll say we met by chance, there was a storm on the way.

- People are gossiping...

- Come on, baby.

- What do I say to my child now?...

- Because I'm scared... Once upon a time, I had a friend. Her life was very sad, her mother was in prison...

- His mother was a director, but she loved reformed opera, loved artists, and spent a lot of the company's money on singing. One day, when she heard that Minh was singing in Tho Cuong, she drove nearly two hundred kilometers to bring Mr. Minh some braised pineapple fish in a clay pot. Journalists wrote a lot about that incident" [85].

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