《丁莊夢》에 나타난 '꿈'의 서사전략

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to present reflections on the various meaning of “dream” in Yanlianke’s novel Dream of Ding Village. Dream of Ding Village portrays the tragic realities of poor rural China that underly glamorous capitalism and is depicted through the lens of dreams. Capitalism did not exist even in minimal fashion in rural China, and selling blood became a way to like a shampoo and fertilizer, the bare necessities of life. The “dream” then was not a simple metaphor for unreality but can be perceived as the author’s desire to precisely expose harsh realities of rural China where the expenditure of the body through selling blood ironically became the only way to retain and sustain life. Thus, while “dream” denotes hopes of wealth and prosperity gained through selling blood, it is no more than a vain pipe dream that can never be realized. In this light, the “dream” which represents a figment of reality and not mere fantasy allows a glimpse into the volatile life that existed below the glamorous capitalist surface. In this sense, the “dream” in the novel signifies wealth and hope for the future but also the augmentation of the realization of a new socialist society. If development and advancement is the outward outcome of capitalism, then the side effect in the rural regions includes the failure to contain AIDS patients in a quarantined school. In this harsh reality, the “dream” represents not only an impossible dream, but it points to the representation of a new hopeful future. In this novel, the dead grandson emerges as the narrator, and he speaks of selling blood in Ding’s Village. This third person’s voice as the speaker makes it difficult to discern reality from fantasy. Because the grandson is speaking on behalf of his grandfather’s dream, it is partially based in reality but also unreality. It presents a dichotomy that if this dream is indeed reality, then the reality can also become fantasy. In addition, the father’s generation which represents capitalism is missing from the novel, and that is the context of the creation of the Ding Village. Furthermore, this novel bridges two generations, one of the grandfather’s generation which signifies socialism and that of the grandson’s generation. While critics describe this novel as a solicitation of penance for material desire or an acute report on the realities of poor rural China, this writer postulates that it goes beyond the aforementioned descriptions as a propaganda of socialistic ideology; hence, it is part of an effort to recall the early socialist era as a way to tighten and narrow the rich-poor gap and the disparity in current China.