Campus Units
World Languages and Cultures
Document Type
Article
Publication Version
Accepted Manuscript
Publication Date
8-19-2015
Journal or Book Title
Frontiers of Literary Studies in China
Volume
9
Issue
2
First Page
235
Last Page
258
DOI
10.3868/s010-004-015-0010-6
Abstract
Commonly acclaimed for its black humor, Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out uses the Buddhist concept of reincarnation to follow two families during the second half of the 20th century. The novel exemplifies the strategies through which Mo Yan transforms the violent and absurd events of recent Chinese history into personal memory of historical trauma. It focuses less, however, on those events per se than on the traumatic effects they create on the individual victims, and on the ways through which personal trauma caused by historical atrocities is addressed and healed. This article analyzes three layers of the novel: the evolving mechanisms of violence that condition the formation of personal trauma; the theatrical manifestation of the state-endorsed violence, and its loss in the post-revolutionary era; and the rationalization of the tragicomic past through the dialectic of remembering and forgetting. Built one on the other, these layers constitute the very dynamic stage on which the individuals interact with the violent and absurd world to negotiate the meaning of their lives, make sense of historical trauma, and insist on driving historical change.
Copyright Owner
Brill Academic Publishers
Copyright Date
2015
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Li, Tonglu, "Trauma, Play, Memory: Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out and Mo Yan’s Strategies for Writing History as Story" (2015). World Languages and Cultures Publications. 194.
https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/language_pubs/194
Included in
Asian History Commons, Chinese Studies Commons, Creative Writing Commons, Domestic and Intimate Partner Violence Commons, Family, Life Course, and Society Commons, Social Control, Law, Crime, and Deviance Commons
Comments
This article is published as Li, T., Trauma, Play, Memory: Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out and Mo Yan’s Strategies for Writing History as Story.” Frontiers of Literary Studies in China, 9, no. 2 (2015) 235–258. DOI: 10.3868/s010-004-015-0010-6. Posted with permission.