After reading the science fiction novel "The Story of Your Life" written by Mr. Jiang Fengnan and watching the film "Arrival" based on it, I suddenly realized the shocking wonders brought about by the difference in the way of thinking.
From the perspective of the plot of this work, you will find that it unexpectedly jumped out of the inertia of ordinary science fiction. It also talks about the arrival of alien civilization on the earth. It does not focus on the "war of aggression" but "learning civilization", plus some "thinking about human nature." The work is unfolding from the first perspective of a female linguist, who has become a breakthrough in the study of alien languages. She discovered that the language system brought by this alien (called the "heptapod barrel" in the work) is completely different from human language. Its writing system is completely separated from the spoken language system. In other words, you cannot speak your language. In the same way, you cannot write what you say.
Gradually, she discovered that such a language system makes these outsiders think very strangely. Humans treat everything with causality, but they view the world with teleology. For example, in the book, the human perspective: a beam of light is entering In water, twists and turns occur due to the difference in refractive index between water and air; the perspective of the heptapod barrel: It is the light that chooses the route from many routes in order to make the time to reach the destination in the shortest time. This is very strange, this way of thinking also gives the heptapod and the heroine the ability to predict the future.
In addition to studying the main line of alien languages, the work adopts a cross-narrative approach, and at the same time shows readers what happened to her daughter after she gained the ability to predict the future in the voice of the heroine, including the funny story of her daughter's growth and the tragedy of her daughter's early death.
In the original novel, the author did not explain the true purpose of the heptapod barrel coming to the earth, but the movie points out that its purpose is "Offer weapons". This "weapons" is not a weapon but a language. The heptapod barrel needs to be given to humans. Language allows humans to save them after a thousand years. I personally think that the explanation is very shallow, and there is still a lot of room for imagination below this.
Looking at it from a human perspective, before I came into contact with this work, I never thought about changing the way of thinking. Everything has a cause and effect. I have always thought this way. But after being struck by the author’s perspective, I would think about what life would be like if I lived with teleology as the center of my thinking? Imagine that people live for death, just like the heptapod, they predict the future as early as when they learn language, and everything that happens in life in the future is to realize the future and reach the end of life, which is death. I know every moment of you and me, but I have to do something and say something so that the future becomes a reality so that I can die eventually. It is extremely desperate to think so.
But the author puts forward a paradox in the heroine's point of view: if this person is a rebellious person, after reading the book of the future, he deliberately does not play cards according to the routine, then he originally destined the future to exist? However, I think this question should be added to human nature: "After we know our future, can we go in the opposite direction? There are countless choices in human life, so can we overcome these countless psychological cues?" Assuming that a person can, then when he deliberately makes a decision that is contrary to the established future, he is actually forced to fix his own future, which is just an established future in the opposite direction. This is why, even if we foresee the future, we cannot change it.
Therefore, the emotional tone of the work is helpless, even desperate, originating from the inability to change and the need to accept. Just like the heroine, even when she predicts that her daughter will die from a strange disease in the future (in the original book, she will die from rock climbing), she still chooses to deceive her husband, choose the established future path, and give birth to her daughter. Judging from the main storyline of the film adaptation, when the study of alien civilization encounters a bottleneck, the major powers responsible for research, led by the three major countries of China, the United States and Russia, have shown a selfish side. Sharing, leading to the suspension of research work. This is the heroine who is a U.S. citizen dialing the phone number of the Chinese leader General Shang. She succeeded in persuading the general with the superstition of her wife’s dream to save the research project. It is not difficult to see another layer of helplessness and despair: first, the adaptor’s choice of China as the first country to make concessions (although it is because of superstition) is undoubtedly the greatest irony of American egoism; second, the adaptor made a fiction. The unity of the great powers of the United States and the world is unrealizable in reality like a fairy tale; third, when heptagram proposed "Offer weapons", the leaders of a group of countries misunderstood its true meaning and regarded it as a threat signal. The degree reflects the narrow sensitivity and lack of security in the human heart. On the whole, the overall emotional color is biased towards depression.
Finally, about the adaptation. When reading a novel, I feel that Mr. Jiang’s story frame is slightly limited, and the plot line is also very short, as if he just gave me the background of the story and he ended it. However, the adaptation of the film made the plot structure more substantial and the emotions more hierarchical, and the "thinking mode" and "ideographs" that were difficult to understand from the words were well represented.
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