Wedding Scene:
She was wearing a cotton print jacket over green satin trousers, with scarlet bands of silk tied around her ankles. Since it was drizzling, she had put on a pair of embroidered slippers. (Mo 39)
Grandma was lightheaded and dizzy inside the stuffy sedan chair, her view blocked by a red curtain that gave off a pungent mildewy odor. (Mo 41)
Grandma was wearing a red wedding dress and covered with red veils. Traditional Chinese marriages would have red as their theme color since it represented fortune, happiness, and power. Only a lawful or primary wife would be able to obtain this color for weddings. The color red for marriage initially and generally would deliver positive emotions. However, since Grandma was mysterious not satisfied with the arranged marriage, the color of blessing stood in stark contrast with her depressed emotion. Since the commonly accepted positivity of red in such occasions, the repetitive depiction of red generated desolate feelings.
Weather:
A blood-red bolt of lightning streaked across the north-eastern sky, and screaming fragments of apricot-yellow sunlight tore through the dense clouds above the dirt road, when Grandma’s sedan chair reached that point. (Mo 46)
A red solar halo crumbled as the sun rose in the east, and in the predawn light the sorghum was so still it seemed ready to burst. (Mo 48)
The author depicted the surrounding environment and weather elements to introduce the emotional aspects of the forthcoming disastrous events. Through depicting the lightning and halo as the unrealistic color, red, the author managed to create a tense atmosphere. While the soothing weather on a wedding day might indicate a cheerful and satisfying marriage, the red evoked intense emotions and foreshadowed the burdensome and fluctuating life of Grandma. Through using red boldly in the literature, Mo Yan successfully affected the emotions and perceptions of the audiences through filtering and posing visual elements in red.
Grandma's Dying Scene:
(Mo 67)
Immediately after Grandma gets shot at her breasts, the red image blocks the whole vision as her blood pours out from the wound. The blood flows so wildly, carrying “the aroma of sorghum wine.” At that moment, readers are as bewildered as Douguan: is the red liquid Grandma’s blood or is it the red sorghum wine? At the end of the day, Mo Yan does not draw a clear distinction between the blood and the sorghum wine. He intentionally mixes them together to show that the Gaomi people are innately vibrant as the wild sorghum. In Chinese language, the saying of you are “what flows in your blood deep in your soul” (gu zi li liu de xue) captures individuals’ inborn inclination to conform to a certain identity or belong to a certain group. In Gaomi Township, Grandma, even though belonging to the long-oppressed women group, lived her life in a bossy, valiant style. She defied her arranged marriage and managed the sorghum brewery. The spirit of red sorghum has manifested in her commitment to take charge of her own destiny, and her blood has invariably fused with the sorghum during days after days of deep fermentation process in wine making.
If the mixing image of blood and red sorghum is still within the reasonable extrapolation of the author, the changing color of red and green is perfect proof for Mo Yan’s unbounded imagination in his writing style. How come Grandma’s blood switches color? And why green? Aesthetically, green is the direct opposite of red. Whereas red symbolizes the vibrancy of life, green implies the end of life (Dong 25). Additionally, green in this context is reflected from and associated with Father’s “agony.” Objectively speaking, there is no way that the blood could exhibit different colors at the same setting. The answer is that Mo Yan is switching perspective. Readers are viewing Grandma’s bleeding breasts through the eyes of Father. It is not Grandma’s blood that is changing color from red to green, but Father is seeing the color change. Once again, it shows how Mo Yan seamlessly mobilizes readers with the emotions of characters in his work, and this literary effect is achieved through the bold usage of magical realism.
If the mixing image of blood and red sorghum is still within the reasonable extrapolation of the author, the changing color of red and green is perfect proof for Mo Yan’s unbounded imagination in his writing style. How come Grandma’s blood switches color? And why green? Aesthetically, green is the direct opposite of red. Whereas red symbolizes the vibrancy of life, green implies the end of life (Dong 25). Additionally, green in this context is reflected from and associated with Father’s “agony.” Objectively speaking, there is no way that the blood could exhibit different colors at the same setting. The answer is that Mo Yan is switching perspective. Readers are viewing Grandma’s bleeding breasts through the eyes of Father. It is not Grandma’s blood that is changing color from red to green, but Father is seeing the color change. Once again, it shows how Mo Yan seamlessly mobilizes readers with the emotions of characters in his work, and this literary effect is achieved through the bold usage of magical realism.
(Mo 71)
Many people believe that at the moment of dying, we see a flashback of the highlights of our life. When Grandma is shot and lies in the field of red sorghum, dying, she sees her memory about falling in love with Commander Yu. Not yielding to the restriction that their social roles imposed on them, they both live and love their life to the fullest. Mo Yan depicts the fullness of their life as radiating “lustrous red.” In this case, whereas the halo of red is created by the most primitive form of desires, driven by the peak of sexual hormones, the red is historic — leaving a mark on Gaomi’s colorful history — and lively — symbolizing the ideal freedom in the pursuit of love.
(Mo 73)
Near the very end of Grandma’s life, the red sorghum becomes alive. They change color and shape. As they take different forms, the sorghum, laughing and crying, strike against Grandma’s heart. This is another fascinating revelation of Mo Yan’s magical realism writing. It gives the sorghum life. They are no longer a symbol in the background, setting the stage. They are a central character in the painting of the Gaomi Township. They are lively actors intertwining with Grandma and Grandad's destiny. The red sorghum once serves as the incubator for Grandma and Grandad’s creation of Father. Now, the dancing stalks guide Grandma to walk to the “liberation” at the end of her life. Red sorghum helps her transcend all the happiness and regrets to allow her to die. They resolved Grandma’s yearning questions:
My heaven... you gave me a lover, you gave me a son, you gave me riches, you gave me thirty years of life as robust as red sorghum. Heaven, since you gave me all that, don't take it back now. Forgive me, let me go! Have I sinned? Would it have been right to share my pillow with a leper and produce a misshapen, putrid monster to contaminate this beautiful world? What is chastity then? What is the correct path? What is goodness? What is evil? You never told me, so I had to decide on my own. I loved happiness, I loved strength, I loved beauty, it was my body, and I used it as I thought fitting. Sin doesn't frighten me, nor does punishment. I'm not afraid of your eighteen levels of hell. I did what I had to do, I managed as I thought proper. I fear nothing. But I don't want to die, I want to live. I want to see more of this world... (Mo 72)
Whatever forms that life takes — whether it’d be chaste, promiscuous, right, or wrong — in essence, it does not change that fact that she controls her body as much as her fate, and it does not change the fact that she belongs to the vibrant Gaomi Township thrived with seas of wild red sorghum.