Soul Mountains by Mabel Lee - Essay Example

Soul Mountains by Mabel Lee Literature is truly an opening through which people see the real world. They have the opportunity of knowing what the real world is all about and drawing their own conclusions. Writers just pen down what is in their minds and leave for the readers to give their own assumptions and eventually be an eye opener to the real world. These literary features have been applied by Mabel Lee in Soul Mountains (Kang-i Sun & Owen 23). From the beginning of the story, we are introduced to the characters ‘you’ and ‘she’. The ‘you’ is described as an indigenous traveler, perhaps a tourist who pursues out the indefinable Lingshan sacred mountain. We realize that he has been in the city for a long time and now wants the village life. For him, he wants to avoid the idea of doing not too demanding jobs, just relaxing having set up a family. He wants to be always be busy working. He meets the ‘she’ who seems disturbed and confused. This makes you’s journey to change into that of a romantic affair. This lady here, looks hopeless and what she only wants is to have intercourse with this man. The lady at a certain time leaves in the man’s story. We are made to know that he is a story teller who later discovers his talent (Xingjian 51). In the meantime, I as an academic and a fan of writing journeys to Sichuan after the misdiagnosis of cancer of the lung. For him, he wants to start a true life away from the notion of real life of the state. A keen observer and follower of literature will concur with me that the Chinese culture of hard work must be pegged on Soul Mountain. This is because of their ever growing economy and development in and out of China. They are all over the world working, refusing simple life of just sitting; they are always working. Lee’s syncretism is permitted to range anywhere it pleases. The furtive journeys bring him to many sites of the Chinese civilization, whose wisdom he takes and shares with local storytellers, historians, and farmers. As a novel with idealistic destination, Soul Mountain keeps the reader from whichever rapture or revelation and rather offers the exposed self in the struggle with itself. Soul Mountain is unlike mere contemporary literatures, intensely indebted to Europe’s modernism while irreversibly infused with the rich Chinese culture. In simple terms, the novel is a window to world literature as it contains immense wisdom, scarce beauty, bursting with experience and knowledge that portrays Chinese culture as fascinating and vast as the humankind history itself. Further, he explores philosophical matters such as knowledge, truth, and the effects of ever life cycle in an individual’s life. All these features are unique literary experiences that do not tie down a reader, rather makes one explore the world. Qn 2. Comparison of the role of women in Red Sorghum and Rice Women for a long time have been undermined. Their role in the society has always been in the kitchen and giving birth. The role of the woman has been expounded in the books, “Red Sorghum” and “Rice.” In Rice for instance, the employer of Five Dragons is a lady called Feng, who runs Great Swan Rice Emporium. Here, we are made to understand that women can also head men and can make good managers. Women can also be inhuman and whores. In Rice, Five Dragon and his wife vengefully crippled their son. We hear this from Dragon’s daughter in-law and that Dragon’s sister was a whore (Tong 14). The short story is therefore a typical showcase of the grim struggle faced by Chinese women for a long period of time now. When we turn to the story, “the Red Sorghum,” women are portrayed as more caring, and they happen to be so. This is during the burial of Big Tooth Yu, where the Grandma prepared a set of white grieving clothes for the narrator’s Father. Women here are also depicted as submissive to their families. We see Grandma and Wang Wenyi’s wife carrying two buckets of mung-bean soup through the sorghum fields preferably taking them to the guerilla fighters who happened to be their children and husbands. This was the war against the Japanese. In addition, the women in Red Sorghum are enduring. Grandma endures all the pain of the bullets that tore through her. Even after the narrator’s father’s efforts to reach and help her, she had already persevered the whole pain and constantly reminds her son that they should not go back. She ties the relationship between her son and her husband who was fighting. She tells her son that her husband was his real dad (Yan 67). Women are loving. Grandma and granddad exchange love in the vast sorghum field. She knows that despite the fact that they are fighting the Japanese, they still love each other. We find her deeply moved after the murder of the Shans, father and the son. She sobs in the sorghum field of the village of the loss. The narrator’s mother foreshadows ahead and warns his son that he should never expose the secret of the distillery as doing so would ruin the family’s reputation and that of the descendants. This is meant to keep them safe and relevant (Yan 80). In conclusion, women in the Red Sorghum have been depicted as having total control of their lives despite the current situation of war they are involved in. They don’t fear but risk sneaking food to the fighters. Women in Red Sorghum are therefore bold. In Rice, even though they take in a man whose desire for sex and power is insatiable, they don’t seem to control their life by themselves. They just wanted to have Five Dragons in to fill the space left by the father of the family. Work Cited Kang-i Sun Chang, Stephen Owen. The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature, Volume 2. Cambridge University Press, 2010. Tong, Su. Rice: A Novel. HarperCollins, 2004. Xingjian, Gao. Soul Mountain. HarperCollins Publishers, 2010. Yan, Mo. Red Sorghum. Random House, 2012. Read More