Analysis of white dog and swing short story
Thesis
The story of White Dog and the Swing written by Mo Yan describes a narrator who is guilty over his hand in an accident that resulted in disfiguring a childhood friend, which changed the course of life of the childhood friend. When the narrator returns after several years later she meets the childhood friend, Nuan. When he returns, the narrator assuages his guilt by telling Nuan that everything that happened was as a result of fate. Nuan does not buy the narrators idea that everything that happens is as a result of fate. The mother of dumb three children pleads with the narrator to impregnate her. Nuan, in fact, tells the narrator that she was in her perfect time as far as her menstrual cycle is concerned.
Nuan adds that she needed a child that is capable of talking. Nuan believes that it is the narrator who is able to save her from the social shame, she tells the narrator that there are more excuses he can give but she makes it clear that she is not prepared to accept any excuse given by the narrator, since the only thing she needs is to have a child with the narrator. The narrator’s empathy for his friend brings with it frightening freedom which is made possible by the powerful emotions. At the same time, we have a mother who has a desire of having a child that is free of deformity. Also, our narrator longs to repay a debt, as the narrator believes that he is responsible for the disfiguring of Nuan. The story comes to an end as the narrator is faced with a challenging decision. The story gets its power in the conflicts that exist between the narrator’s unparalleled empathy and his and his ambivalence about cuckolding her husband to conceive a child with her.
Analysis
The story of White Dog and the Swings initially begins with a lyrical description of the story’s middle-aged narrator returning to his hometown for the first time in a span of ten years, where he finally encounters the white dog, that the story gets its title (Knight, 2014). The narrator of the story tries to explain that there was once a breed of large white dogs in the Shandong province. However, after much interbreeding between the white dogs and others has resulted in a point where there are no longer any pure specimens left. The locals in the province of Shandong, call a dog white as long as the non-white portions of its fur are not too prominent. In fact, the dog found in the opening scene is actually distinguished as much by its black paws as by its white coat.
The white dog and the Swings revolve around an educated narrator who is returning back to his hometown. In the beginning, the story describes how a dog leads the narrator, who has returned to his hometown across a bridge. Nuan, a childhood friend of the narrator is described by use of canine imagery (Huang & Duran 2014).
When the narrator observes Nuan’s bulging breasts under her shirt, our narrator reminisces a childhood song whereby a young girl’s breast is compared to gold, while a married lady’s breast is compared to silver and a mother’s breasts are being compared to a dog’s teats. The narrator asks Nuan how many children she has. The narrator is surprised to be told that Nuan has three sons considering Chinas policy on one child. Nuan explained that she had triplets like a dog that gives birth to pups. The narrator attacks the Chinese corrupt officials about the one-child policy using the story of Nuan (Duke, 2015).
The narrator characterizes Nuan’s disfigured appearance which implicitly positions her as a figurative extension of the white dog that helps to reconnect her to the narrator in the first place. In this way, Nuan becomes both an embodiment of the white dog itself as well as a symptom of the inevitable limits of the narrator’s own perspective.
Mo Yan’s most significant theme is whether the responsibility for evil committed lies within an individual or is it forces that are beyond their control, for instance, lust or even history.
References
Huang, A., & Duran, A. (2014). Mo Yan’s Work and the Politics of Literary Humor. Mo Yan in Context: Nobel Laureate and Global Storyteller, 153-64.
Knight, S. (2014). The realpolitik of Mo Yan’s fiction. Mo Yan in Context: Nobel Laureate and Global Storyteller, 93-105.
Duke, M. S. (2015). Worlds of Modern Chinese Fiction: Short Stories and Novellas from the People’s Republic, Taiwan and Hong Kong: Short Stories and Novellas from the People’s Republic, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Routledge.