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Wednesday, May 06, 2009 8:07 PM
I read two extremely startling stories recently. The author is Giddens, a famous Taiwanese author. As I was reading those two short stories in his book, Green Horse, all I could think of was "What a twisted, twisted story". And this thought kept running through my head for both of the stories.
The first is entitled 高潮, which in his book, is translated literally into "High Tide", but actually should mean "Orgasm". And before you scream "HARLOT!" in my face, it is a very stark, meaningful yet dark story. You heard me right, for a title like this, it is neither cheap nor superficial. The story talks about this man who suffers from erectile dysfunction, and hence lies to his naive wife that an orgasm is but a major plot and conspiracy invented by feminists around the world to lie to everyone so that men will feel inferior because it doesn't actually exist. Believe it or not, his wife takes it for real and the most striking thing about this story is, I think, what it reflects about the social pretensions that people in society portray today. I can't really describe it here, but the way the story was written and the use of the details amplified the darkness and twisted-ness that serves to mirror (although it is quite a caricature) the superficiality of people and the lengths that we go to to justify our glaring weaknesses. This sums it up: "一蹶不振的鸟，乱说着颠三倒四的阴谋论。" How poetic is that.
The second story is 机构, Industry. It presents a somewhat utopian society, whereby all children are kept in little white rooms all by themselves from childhood to 30 years of age. In that span of time, they are educated to be generous, kind and responsible people of society. In this seemingly perfect education system, the children are taught to be aggressive towards only one person: Adolf Hitler. They are screened videos of his speech and are then regularly called to sit for exams which are nothing more than the children criticising Hitler for his atrocities as much as they can. The more passionate they are about their case against Hitler, the higher their marks would be. The protagonist is now 30 years old, and after he sits for his final exam (another strong, full-blooded attack against Hitler), he is led to an unknown room and knocked unconcious. When he wakes up, he sees hundreds of others just like him in that room, except for one very chilling fact-- they all look exactlylike Hitler. Being trained for 30 years to hate Hitler and acknowledge his monstrosities, the children are actually clones of Hitler that the Jews developed to avenge their ancestors and family members. Imagine that! And the scene where they recognised each other as the most brutal dictator of all time is written as so chaotic and frenzied, all of them screaming "Monster!", unaware that they actually look like Hitler themselves. All I can say is, WOW. I was overwhelmed when I finished this story, and so haunted by the fact that revenge can be so dark and evil and the other societal issues like the concept of Utopia etc,etc.
Beautiful stories, really. So utterly out-of-this-world, yet so pertinent to today's society. But these two are not the only ones who speak such strong criticisms about the issues today. One of my favourite-st books, Lord of the Flies by William Golding, has by far, impacted me the most through its questioning of identity and survival. And who can forget An Enemy of the People by Arthur Miller, a painting of words that strike disillusionment into the reader's heart and mocks the majority that always seems to regard itself as right. The book made me tear :)
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