The world of art in short stories by Y Ban - 11


Thereby, the writing style will be unified and "unchanged" throughout the writer's entire work.

In literature, tone only concerns the form of speech, but there is still a close relationship between the form of speech and the content being spoken. Because tone is always associated with the use of imagery to describe the subject of the work. Therefore, literary connoisseurs can base on each characteristic of tone in a narrative passage to determine the owner of that work.

In many research books such as theory and literary dictionaries, many types of tone are pointed out: ironic, satirical, ambiguous, sarcastic, solemn, arrogant; casual, sorrowful, sad, profound... and corresponding to each psychological state of a person, we have countless different ways of expression. Therefore, finding the right tone will help the writer tell the story better, expressing more deeply his aesthetic ideal. Surveying Y Ban's short stories, we pay attention to the following three tones:

3.3.2.1. Lyrical, mellow voice:

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This is the basic tone that creates the feminine quality in Y Ban's short stories. This tone is easily found in the type of stories where the narrator calls himself "I" and tells about his own life. For example, the confession of a daughter who "accidentally" did something wrong: "Life goes on day by day. Every day I still join in: I go to the movies, go to balls, go on trips... but after all the fun, I am even lonelier. I want love. I already have a full first love. Either equal to or more. Mother and reason do not let me indulge. If that day, despite the sin, mother had let us get married, I would have become a normal woman and not be a widow in a young girl choosing a husband like this." ( Letter to Mother Au Co ).


The world of art in short stories by Y Ban - 11

when the character opens his soul to feel the peace of warm, dear rural life: “The first rays of the day's strong sunlight pierced the white fluffy clouds. Then, as if bursting out, the light filled the entire eastern horizon. Oh, in the blue background of the sky and those fluffy clouds, I saw a peaceful village.” ( Going to the market early ). And it could also be the stirring moments in the soul amidst the hustle and bustle of life: “The river wind blew my hair. The river flowed gently. The cornfields on the other side of the river were unusually green… The pungent smell of the soil, of pepper, of the river wind, was strangely intoxicating.” ( Hometown ); “the crystal sunlight was shining brightly outside, the leaves on the trees were clean and fresh after the night rain, showing off their charm under the sunlight” ( The Woman Standing Before the Mirror ); “every afternoon when the sunset covered the sky and earth with a purple cloak, the sound of the shepherd's flute rang out, touching people's hearts. One early morning when the dawn rose with a bright pink color and the lush green of the grass and trees, there were two flowers growing in the middle of the two rows of background colors, which were his eyes and lips" ( Love Story ); "The hedges of green acanthus. The acanthus hedge near Cam village's communal house was as thick as a hand span, as high as the eyebrows, cut evenly. It was so beautiful." ( Cam village land ) also had a strong lyrical quality.

The lyrical quality is also expressed in the confidences and subjective emotions of the characters in stories without plots. Events that are already few are drowned out by the characters' moods: "I read voraciously and was so happy that I couldn't grasp anything. I read a lot of books and novels, now I feel real. It's me, not the character in the story anymore. The happiness came so quickly that I was stunned and couldn't hide the poem." ( The Grass Crown ); "She was almost desperate with regret, but she needed to be decisive. She raised her other hand to touch her shaggy hair and felt scared." ( Women Born from the Night ). The mood of


The adulterous woman in her dream: “She reached a feeling of strength she had never felt before. Then she gradually sank into nothingness. A realm of dim, immense light. She gradually sank down. She was lost, trying to hold it back, but there was nothing around her.” ( Woman and Dreams ). Or the state of mind of the daughter who had mistakenly abandoned her child: “I felt my pain, and also the pain of my mother. The first month I was confused, the second month I was afraid, the third month something overcame my fear…, something warm and gentle… Now it is no longer there.” ( Letter to Mother Au Co ). Reading these lines, we see a Y Ban who is gentle, sensitive, tolerant and full of love.

Y Ban also uses the form of diary ( The Magical Woman, The Grass Crown ), letter ( The Letter to Mother Au Co, The Little Devil in Me ) to express the secret desires of the character. The writer lets the reader immerse themselves in the flashback with the character: “At the age of seventeen, entering university, I was a girl who was neither beautiful nor charming. To compensate, I was intelligent and studied well. Nature was very fair when it gave this girl beauty but little intelligence. That girl was intelligent but not beautiful. But nature has no way to let people understand right away that they only have one or a few abilities. Therefore, beautiful people think they are intelligent. And intelligent people mistakenly think they are beautiful. This is sometimes true. Because beautiful people often conquer what they want with beauty. Intelligent people, of course, with intelligence. But, perhaps this is only true for women. Seventeen years old, the threshold of life: career and love. Career seems to open its arms to welcome us. Teachers and friends all love and somewhat admire us. However, we still feel it is not enough and are angry. That is when we go out for a walk or go to parties, we are not attracted to boys.


pay attention. In my heart, I want that, in any field, I can stand out as a unique person.” ( The Magical Woman ). The reader seems to follow the woman’s entire youth through each page of her diary. Y Ban also leads the reader back to the character’s past in The Little Devil in Me : “That day I had just graduated from university… One autumn afternoon, the purple sunlight, the gentle breeze was enough to make my lips red and plump… About a week later, that person wrote to me… It was a sad, cold, numbing afternoon… A week later, probably because of his wife’s arrangement, that person came to see me.”

It can be seen that the lyrical and gentle voice has created a soft and feminine writing style for Y Ban. All are guided by the writer's instinct and create a gentle but no less moving tone in the reader's heart.

3.3.2.2. Philosophical contemplative voice:

Y Ban often lets his characters contemplate happiness in relation to the bitterness they have to experience: “But life's ups and downs, ups and downs, happiness and unhappiness, are only a hair's breadth apart. When happy, people look towards the promised land, when unhappy, people remember the old ferry dock.” ( Cai Ty ). They realize the truth of life: “In life, there is no clear boundary between happiness or unhappiness, pleasure and pain. Those feelings have a very wide circle of interference. Happiness? Then there is unhappiness. Happiness? Then there will be suffering immediately.” ( After lightning comes storm ). They often realize many things from what makes them suffer. The flower-selling woman philosophizes: “God is nothing more than the most cunning man. His gifts are nothing more than coins with holes.” ( The woman born from the darkness ). Successful women also have their own reasons: "When people are successful, they give themselves certain demands and conditions.


"( Chicken incubating a shadow ). When experiencing pain, they often philosophize about the disadvantages that only women can understand and share with each other. The woman in Tu said: "Well, that's human destiny. Women either suffer from their parents, or their husbands and children. How many are complete?" The woman in Chicken incubating a shadow said: "We women have stages that are no different from that chicken incubating a shadow. The rest is true love."

From the philosophical pages about human experience, Y Ban expressed his views on life. The rebellious younger brother in The Realm of Hatred told his sister: “In life, not many miserable people can survive for long. Being a decent person is happier, sister. A decent person often suffers disadvantages, but even if they suffer disadvantages, they are still decent people.” Each person’s life is created and maintained by themselves: “In the human world, there is light and darkness. Light does not necessarily mean seeing everything clearly, and darkness does not mean not seeing anything. People in the human world will certainly find their existence in life.” ( Magic Eyes ). Grandmother in The Bright Zone of Memory taught her: “Human life is very short, but death is not the end. A human life that truly cultivates can die and be reincarnated as an animal… After each life as an animal, one must also cultivate to be able to pass on to the next life. Otherwise, the soul will be lost and homeless, and will never be able to return to human life, my dear… In every life, one must cultivate to be free.” Or a passage that a teacher taught in the past: “Whoever knows how to repent will rise up” in The Vietnamese Woman on the Danube River that the student sent to her old teacher after a visit. Sometimes the writer also stated the law of life as in The Story in the Forest : “That wherever it comes from, it must be returned there. It was born from the mother’s womb, so return it to the earth. Whoever does wrong will be punished like that.”

With a philosophical tone, Y Ban's characters are reflected from many levels and planes. They are different but have one thing in common: they have experienced


pain. Their philosophy may not be completely suitable for the majority but is a real part of life. Before each philosophy are the experiences of difficulties in life. After each philosophy are serious thoughts and concerns about life. With this tone, the writer has revealed his worldview, his outlook on life and increased the generalization of the artistic image.

3.3.2.3. Humorous, satirical tone:

Besides a lyrical, gentle, contemplative, philosophical Y Ban, readers also see a humorous Y Ban when criticizing the negative aspects of society. Criticizing the distribution of goods and stamps, Y Ban lets his character speak up: "In those miserable times, everything was feces and feces were like shit. The family had many children so they were always hungry." ( Mother cannot apologize to her child ). In Cam Cu, the writer makes readers haunted by the dirty toilet with a humorous tone: "I had to cover my nose and say It stinks, I can't stand it - The girl's face was cold: Do you think this is your bed? If it's called a toilet, it must stink - I don't understand why there is a two-hole toilet like this and do adults go together like us? That will forever be a secret question and I wonder if this secret has anything to do with this verse:

Loving you is not about silver or gold, I love you because your house has a two-compartment toilet"

The verse itself is very humorous and when combined with the above situation, its effectiveness is multiplied. She criticized the hypocritical, bureaucratic, and indifferent way of raising children in the officialdom: “Your face is too honest, you think it shows on your face. But people in organizations cannot be like that… practice having empty eyes and a flat face. Smile, talk, but it has no effect.


What… Your words and actions must be unpredictable, just mumble, yes yes is good, absolutely never affirm anything” ( Stork Village ) She criticized the way a psychologist catches flies and sells them to entertain people: “We men have hundreds of thousands of frustrations that drive us crazy, leading to premature death, I just thought of this way of escaping. Every game of our men seems to have two sides… my game only costs five hundred silver coins… the only difficulty is the input. There must be flies, uncle. A fly is a very silly thing, a fly that lands in a manure pen – extremely silly – and yet it is ridiculous” ( The Anger, the Frustration, the Ridiculousness ). She also criticized the form of joint venture in industry through the words of a car repair boy: “If I had money like you, I would buy a Chinese car, half the price but it runs as well as anyone else. But the main thing is that he is not angry. Joint venture, domestic... the hell. The child made it and assembled her car, genuine Chinese. Tomorrow she will take it to the store to exchange it, otherwise she will argue for half a day, the child will be as small as an ant, and then she will be so angry that she will vomit blood" ( Journey of the Counterfeit Bill ). The humorous tone has given Y Ban's works a unique sound. In many works, satire is accompanied by humorous laughter, but basically it is not discreet but somewhat harsh and profound. After the laughter is a stern look at reality, an uncompromising attitude towards the negative side of life.


CONCLUSION


Y Ban joined the literary world and made a splash right from her first work, A Letter to Mother Au Co, with her own mark. In the flow of contemporary literature, we can easily recognize a gentle yet passionate, satirical yet thoughtful Y Ban next to the mature and experienced Nguyen Thi Thu Hue, the witty and profound Phan Thi Vang Anh, the sharp Li Lan, the soft and determined Do Bich Thuy. Each of her collections of stories attracts the attention of a large number of readers and critics. With certain successes in the literary world, she continues to write because "When we succeed, life will forgive us all our mistakes. That's so true! Pick up a pen and write. Write with your flesh and blood to redeem your mistakes." (Y Ban - First pages - New Works Magazine, January 1998)

Surveying eight collections of short stories by Y Ban, we see a diverse world of characters and a unique narrative art. She is very sharp when writing about life, about people in everyday life with their thoughts and inhibitions. Introverted thinking has dominated the world of characters in her works. Characters in Y Ban's short stories tend to express moods. The writer often spends time for characters to defend, explain or torment themselves to awaken and perfect their personalities. The writer has explored the mysterious part of humans, especially women. Through her works, readers see a mysterious, precarious world of women, full of love and sacrifice. She often uses an external narrative point of view for her works to bring objectivity and trust to readers. Whether she lets characters tell their own stories or "transforms" into the narrator, it brings readers interesting experiences. Y Ban's story situations are attractive thanks to the types of situations: mood situations, spontaneous situations.

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