The Watch and Return of The Light: Talking about the mythological narrative of Fan Wen's "The Sun Turns"

The consensus on Fan Wen's novel "The Sun Turns" generally focuses on its theme, epochality, abundant allegory and mature narrative form. Relatively speaking, the author's use of national myths and legends as motifs to structure the characteristics of the whole book does not seem to attract enough attention.

The mythological motif of the novel begins with the sun myth of the Punong branch of the Zhuang people. There is a clear record of the sun myth in the book: the sun in the sky once turned away on a summer solstice day, and since then the light has never been bright, the cold night is long, the mountains and rivers are confused, and there is no distinction between man and beast. The creator god Brodah separated heaven and earth and led the people to create the golden sun. The golden sun gave birth to 12 children, so there were 12 suns in the heavens, and the earth was roasted hot and hot. The people could not bear it, so they sent a strong man to shoot out 11 suns, leaving only the sun of the daughter's body to disappear, and the earth began to fall into darkness again. A Zhuang mother who went through great hardships to find the sun and even lost her daughter finally found the hidden sun under the banyan tree and found that the sun was her lost daughter. The Zhuang mother asked four giant birds to carry the daughter of the sun to the sky, and the world was once again illuminated.

This myth runs through the narrative of Fan Wen's novel "The Sun Turns", which contains two key words: motherhood and return. The sun never really left, but quietly hid, and it was the call of motherhood that brought the sun back. The sun returns to the sky, just as a daughter returns to her mother. The correspondence between the ontology and metaphorical body of the myth is the light and dark lines and the main characters in the book.

The bright line in "The Sun Turns" is the truth of the retired criminal investigation expert Zhuo Shimin who has traveled thousands of miles to track down the child abduction case, and the dark line is the struggle of Cao Qiankuan, the village chief of Nanshan Village, who led the whole village to build a road to get rid of poverty. There is also a side line buried in the middle, that is, the story of the first love of Zhuo Shimin's daughter Zhuo Wanyu. Ye Xiaoyang is Zhuo Wanyu's ex-boyfriend, the two broke up because of different ideals, and later Zhuo Wanyu became a university teacher, while Ye Xiaoyang was appointed as the deputy county magistrate of a poverty-stricken county, and became dark and vicissitudes in order to carry out the poverty alleviation work in the whole county, and there was a fight with the ragged Cao Qiankuan, which almost made Zhuo Wanyu unrecognizable. They represent the heroic figures in mythology, Zhuo Shimin is "praising the father day by day", Cao Qiankuan is "foolish to move the mountain", so that the people can live a better life and cut through thorns. They were not the omnipotent god Ofo, but the "ones who sought the sun."

On the other hand, if you trace the mythological archetype, the "person who retrieves the sun" corresponds to the Zhuang mother, and the tradition of women sacrificing the sun in Yutani Village also implies that there is an element of matriarchal society. Therefore, the motherhood shown in the female group portrait (mother image) in the book can be regarded as the driving force behind the return of the sun. The four main female characters in the book are Wei Xiaoxiang, a young mother who has lost her child, Lin Fang, a female entrepreneur who cannot have children but regards her adopted son as a treasure, Zhuo Wanyu, an anthropologist who has a daughter, and Yang Cuihua, a trafficker who has also lost her children, who has also lost her children, who play a pivotal role in the kidnapping case. Wei Xiaoxiang and Nong Jianguang are a Zhuang couple, the first child they gave birth to was bought by Lin Fang and his wife through an intermediary, named Lin Chucheng, but unfortunately suffered from leukemia and urgently needed bone marrow transplantation. This created the "cause" of the kidnapping of the little girl Nong Yangyang. After Zhuo Wanyu learned about the incident, she persuaded Lin Fang to wake up as Zhuo Shimin's daughter and mother, and finally made Lin Fang repent to Nong Jianguang and his wife, planting a "fate" for the "peace" of the two families. Yang Cuihua because of poverty in her early years, and her husband desperately took the risk of engaging in child trafficking, after going to prison, she wanted to change her mind, but her son died of a sudden illness, which made her feel that it was all retribution. In the midst of yin and yang, she became the person who took care of Nong Yangyang, and this innocent and kind little girl always overlapped with the voice and smile of her son in her memory, which made her move her mind to take Nong Yangyang to escape, and also contributed to the "fruit" of the urgent confrontation between the good and evil sides and the final decisive battle.

The sun symbolizes light and hope. The main narrative line of "The Sun Turns" starts from the kidnapping of the little girl Nong Yangyang, and ends with the successful rescue of Nong Yangyang, symbolizing the return of the sun in the surface structure of the novel. The mythical sun is both a daughter and a redemptive connotation, and it is its return that brings hope to the world. The safe return of Nong Yangyang saved the life of her brother Lin Chucheng, and Nong Jianguang and his wife were reunited. The cultural industry of TangguZhai shows great vitality under the investment of Lin Fang, and criminals such as Wu Yu are punished, except for the heroic sacrifice of the old hero Zhuo Shimin, the overall direction of the novel is bright.

And Zhuo Shimin's death is both unexpected and reasonable. This man has an iron bone, never bows to all the evil forces in the world, but on the eve of retirement, he was found to have pancreatic cancer, for his life, it can be said that he personally experienced the sadness of the impermanence of life. Zhuo Shimin has an old father with a back, and a wife and daughter granddaughter, and he does not want to lie on a hospital bed, full of tubes, and leave in the sobs of relatives and friends, as he said in his inner monologue in the first chapter: "If he can die violently, if he is not like a hero, at least he will not be a boy." The ending given to him by the novel is also dramatic, he died of a heart attack on the way back from driving after successfully catching the criminal. Although the reader will inevitably sigh when he sees this, this abrupt way of dying is undoubtedly decent compared to imagining that the terminally ill veteran is gradually withering away. What is intertextual with the original "confession" is that Zhuo Shimin was still fulfilling the obligations of a policeman at the moment of cardiac arrest, and he threw the gun on his body out of the window with severe pain, leaving no opportunity for the gangsters detained in the car to take advantage of it, and he lived up to the name of a hero until his death.

Another connotation of "the sun turning" is that the deep structure is the changes brought by poverty alleviation to the lives of the people. The story takes place in Yunnan, that is, the sun must pass through on the Tropic of Cancer, from the geographical latitude, the sun will still "return" even if it "turns", just like the sacrifice of the protagonist Zhuo Shimin is only physically dead, but the spirit is not destroyed. Zhuo Shimin, Cao Qiankuan, Lin Fang once called each other by their comrades-in-arms, after retiring from the army, Zhuo Shimin devoted himself to the cause of the police, Cao Qiankuan chose to stick to his hometown, Lin Fang resigned from public office to enter the mall, and worked hard to become a local model entrepreneur, their experience is also the epitome of the progressive generation in the wave of reform and opening up, and this kidnapping case has once again intersected the fates of several people.

Behind this kidnapping, there is a profound social issue – rural poverty. Zhuo Shimin is faced with the evils bred by poverty, Cao Qiangui, Yang Cuihua, Wu Wei and others are desperate because of poverty that cannot see their heads; Cao Qiankuan is facing the ignorance and isolation created by poverty, so road construction has become the only bridge that can communicate with the outside world; Lin Fang was once shaken by motherhood and the loss of fame and fortune, standing at the crossroads of law and morality, but she still chose to "turn around" and began a journey of self-redemption, promoting the advancement of the poverty alleviation battle at the commercial level. At the end of the story, the cliffs of Nanshan Village have finally become a wide road, and the activities of worshipping the sun in Tanggu Village have also been officially recognized, and everything is developing in a good direction. Just like the ending quotes "the earth is selfless, the sun is selfless", I believe that through the selfless dedication of generations, this sun-filled southwest land will continue to sow the seeds of hope.

Fan Wen is one of the few contemporary "pilgrimage" writers who can organically combine national culture, regional scenery, religious myths and serious philosophies of life. "The Sun Turns" can also be regarded as the writer Fan Wen's turn to the realism of the turn, the layout of the novel is the classical frettage pyramid structure, by the retired old police officer Zhuo Shimin chasing the disappearance of Nong Yangyang as the entry point, the plot layer by layer, gradually into the climax, and the footprints accompanying his investigation of the case extend from Qingshan City, Tanggu Village in Qingshan Prefecture to Nanshan Village, and the historical picture of the customs and customs of northeast Yunnan Province is also slowly unfolding. Interspersed with the myth of sun worship, which constitutes a metaphor in the textual sense with the title of the book, the virtual place name coincides with the archetype of the fate of the characters, and then points to the practical path of "poverty alleviation" in the rural areas of Yunnan, reaching a metaphor for the real world, and the two together lay out a grand and simple epic narrative. As Fan Wen said in the afterword of the book, "the change is real, just between the turns", the national spirit in myths and legends is the "real" in the "virtual", the change of the times in the realistic picture is the "virtual" in the "real", which can present the magnificent beauty of the sun's return to the north in the fusion of virtual and real, and Fan Wen's turn cannot be described as unsuccessful.