Literary Master 1978

The so-called "The Ferryman" is actually a story adapted by Lin Chaoyang based on the movie "Life of Pi" that was seen in later generations.

"Life of Pi" tells the story of an Indian boy named Pi who was stranded on a broken hull with his family on a shipwreck and had to drift in the Pacific Ocean with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.

The movie was directed by Chinese director Ang Lee. After its release in 2012, it grossed $600 million worldwide.

At the same time, the movie also won many awards such as the Oscar for Best Director and Best Visual Effects that year. It can be said that it was a double harvest of box office and awards, which brought director Ang Lee's film career to a new peak.

It is worth mentioning that when the movie was released in China, it caused a lot of repercussions and a wave of movie-watching, which made the movie finally achieve a box office of 570 million yuan in China.

"Life of Pi" is not a commercial blockbuster. At this point in 2012, the box office of 570 million yuan is undoubtedly a big box office miracle.

After all, this is a movie invested and produced by Americans, shot by Chinese, and tells the story of Indians.

From this point, it can be seen that the story of "Life of Pi" itself is very consistent with the aesthetics and tastes of the Chinese people.

In Lin Chaoyang's story, the background of the times changed from India in the 1970s to China in the 1930s.

The protagonist Pi became Du Sanjiang, and his age and personality did not change much. Only the religious beliefs of Pi in the movie that were not in line with China's national conditions were changed to Buddhism, Taoism and Christianity.

The insurance adjuster's questioning of the protagonist in the movie was also removed, and the story was directly turned into a dialogue between the protagonist and the writer. In this way, Lin Chaoyang continued the two-layer narrative structure in the original story.

A writer who was looking for inspiration accidentally learned about Du Sanjiang's legendary experience and came to the hospital to interview him. At this time, more than 40 years had passed since Du Sanjiang crossed the sea and drifted. He was already a 60-year-old man. He half-lying on the hospital bed told the writer about his legendary experience.

Du Sanjiang's father Du Bangjie was the first generation of animal research scholars in China and the first director of the Shanghai Municipal Zoo. Because of such family conditions, Du Sanjiang developed a habit of getting close to animals since childhood.

During the Republic of China period, Shanghai was a gathering place for merchants and politicians from various countries. The cultures of many countries and nationalities were intertwined, allowing Du Sanjiang to come into contact with religions such as monks, Taoists, and Christians. He was born with precocity and gradually developed a unique view of faith, human and animal nature.

Once he tried to make friends with a Bengal tiger, his father angered his father. His father taught him a bloody lesson on the spot: animals and humans have different thinking patterns, and if you forget this, you will die.

The war of aggression against China broke out, and Japan quickly occupied the northern region of China. After the tragic defeat of the Battle of Songhu, the powerful planned to take advantage of the war to secretly sell the rare animals in the zoo to foreign countries for profit.

The father, who was preparing to take refuge with his family, discovered the conspiracy of the powerful and tried to stop them regardless of the danger to his life. In the end, the whole family was arrested and taken to the ship that was going to transport the animals abroad.

Originally, after going out to sea, their family was going to be killed by bad guys, but they didn't expect a violent storm to suddenly set off on the sea, and the ship was swallowed up in an instant.

The ship sank, but Du Sanjiang survived on the lifeboat. In addition to him, there was also the Bengal tiger, hyena, chimpanzee and injured zebra that he had contacted before.

The adventure journey began.

In order to survive, the extremely hungry hyena judged the situation and killed the injured zebra. The gorilla was also killed to stop the hyena's atrocities, and Du Sanjiang could only watch helplessly.

But he also knew that under the watchful eyes of the hyena, he might be the next to die.

Just when he was about to muster up the courage to declare war on the hyena, the tiger killed the hyena.

Facing the hungry tiger, Du Sanjiang had to throw the newly made simple raft into the sea and jump on the simple raft himself.

In this way, one boat, one tiger, one raft and one person were connected by a rope and drifted aimlessly in the endless ocean.

Along the way, Du Sanjiang had to be on guard against the hungry tiger at all times, but at the same time, the two were creatures with the same suffering in this lonely sea.

They were hostile to each other, attacked each other, accompanied each other, experienced life and death together, and witnessed the magnificent wonders of the sea together.

When they woke up for the last time, they drifted to a human-shaped island, where food was everywhere, and even tree roots were edible.

The tiger came ashore, and Du Sanjiang wanted to stay here, but at night he found that the fruits on the tree actually had human teeth.

It turned out that this was a cannibal island, which attracted living creatures to the island during the day. At night, the fresh water turned into acid, digested these living creatures, and obtained nutrients to supply life on the island.

In order to survive, Du Sanjiang had to set off again. This time he filled the boat with food, returned to the sea, and soon found land.

When Du Sanjiang finally returned to land, the tiger also came ashore and disappeared in the jungle by the sea.

Through Du Sanjiang's statement, the writer got a legendary story full of challenges and adventures, but he felt that there were some difficult to understand parts in Du Sanjiang's narration.

For example, Du Sanjiang mentioned that after the shipwreck, the gorilla floated to his boat on a banana, the flying fish they encountered at sea that were delivered to their mouths, the fact that Du Sanjiang and the tiger coexisted for such a long time without any injury, and the various magical things on the human-shaped island...

Under the writer's constant questioning, Du Sanjiang finally told another version of the story.

In this version of the story, no animals survived, only him, his mother, the cook and the sailor on the ship.

The sailor broke his leg and the wound was infected. The cook suggested that the sailor amputate to save his life, but in the drifting sea, without anesthesia and anti-inflammatory drugs, it was impossible to complete the amputation, and the sailor died.

Then the cook used the sailor's stump to catch fish, which is the origin of the flying fish on the sea in Du Sanjiang's first story.

The mother saw that the cook was not trying to save the sailor, but his purpose was actually to kill the sailor and use his body to hoard sea fish as food.

Later, the beastly nature of the cook gradually emerged, and he actually ate the remaining meat on the sailor.

One day, Du Sanjiang was beaten by the cook because he accidentally lost the fish. His mother was stabbed to death by the cook to protect him and thrown into the sea to become food for sharks.

The anger and animality in Du Sanjiang's heart were completely ignited. He waited for an opportunity to kill the cook with the same knife, avenged his mother, and survived.

At this point, Du Sanjiang smiled and asked the writer, which story do you want to believe?

The story ended here.

Ye Zhaoyan was still unsatisfied after reading the novel. The latter story was not developed in the novel, but only a few thousand words were used to describe it.

In this story, Du Sanjiang seemed to tell the truth, but in fact there were some puzzling places.

Because he always felt that the story was not finished, and there were some doubts in his heart that were not solved.

When his eyes stared at the few lines of words on the last page of the novel for a while, he suddenly felt a creepy feeling in his heart.

If Du Sanjiang compared people to animals and beautified his memory, then is the truth of the matter really as the second story tells?

In his mind, he kept replaying the two stories told by Du Sanjiang. The fragmented information was constantly pieced together, and he seemed to be getting closer and closer to the truth of the story.

Suddenly, a sense of enlightenment suddenly rose in his heart.

If according to Du Sanjiang's statement, the hyena is the vicious cook, the injured zebra is the injured sailor, and the mother is the chimpanzee, then Du Sanjiang is the Bengal tiger.

The four people drifted on the boundless sea. In order to fill their stomachs, the cook first targeted the injured sailor, and then killed Du Sanjiang's mother.

Du Sanjiang avenged his mother and killed the cook again.

After a fight, only Du Sanjiang was left on the boat. Du Sanjiang was the tiger that was catching the cicada while the oriole was waiting behind.

This also explains why, in the first story narrated by Du Sanjiang, he could live with the tiger safely for 277 days, because the tiger was himself, representing the evil thoughts in his heart, the darkness in the deepest part of human nature.

After landing, the tiger disappeared into the jungle and never appeared again, which also explains this problem.

Ye Zhaoyan thought along this line of thought. His mother was killed by the cook. When his mother died, with the cook's character, he would not even let go of the sailor's limbs. How could he throw his mother's body into the sea?

So, Du Sanjiang lied about this matter.

Ye Zhaoyan thought of a possibility, and his heart sank.

In the desperate situation without food, where did those bodies go?

Reason told Ye Zhaoyan that Du Sanjiang, who released his inner beast, would do the same thing as the cook.

Otherwise, he would not have survived to the end and landed. Maybe he had starved to death while drifting.

So, where those bodies went in the end, it goes without saying.

Thinking of this, Ye Zhaoyan felt the blood surging in his chest, and it was emotionally difficult to accept.

The more he thought about it, the more terrible he felt, and the more he thought about it, the more he felt a deep despair of human nature.

At the same time, he could not help but feel a strong sense of nausea in his stomach, and he suddenly started to dry heave. He held the wall with his hands, and the violent physiological reaction made him cough and vomit uncontrollably.

Tears moistened his eyes, and saliva flowed uncontrollably along his open mouth.

It took him a long time to recover, and he wiped the tears from the corners of his eyes with his fingers. It was neither touching nor pity, but the physiological reaction of vomiting.

He took a deep breath and focused his eyes on the magazine again.

Stubbornly continued to analyze, then the human-shaped island that Du Sanjiang and Lao Hu saw and docked should be the incarnation of his mother in his heart.

The ubiquitous tree roots and vines on the island represent the meridians and blood vessels of the human body, and there are dense meerkats on the island.

Ye Zhaoyan remembered the description of these meerkats in the novel, saying that they were a wriggling white patch from a distance, and the image of maggots parasitizing on rotten meat floated through his mind.

The fruits on the island contain teeth, like the remnants of digestion by gastric juice.

Ye Zhaoyan understood that this human-shaped island was also Du Sanjiang's fantasy after the cruel real memory was fictionalized and beautified, and it was his mother's flesh and blood that nourished his life.

He gradually sorted out the hidden third story in the novel, and understood why Lin Chaoyang stopped writing after briefly telling the second story.

Because the last story was too cruel, in this story, humanity had disappeared, only the naked beastly nature roared unscrupulously on the boundless sea.

The shock in his heart was hard to calm down for a long time, and the deep fear made Ye Zhaoyan cold all over, and he closed the book with his hand.

After a few seconds, he picked up the magazine again and put it farther away.

When he returned to the bed, he couldn't help looking in the direction of the magazine, and he was still frightened.

In the short term, he probably won't read this novel again.