Love and friendship are the two main lines of the story. Love is the true beginning of the story, and friendship constitutes the true end of the story.
Probably every man will have two women in his life. One gives him eternal dreams, and the other gives him tangible company. For noodles, Deborah is the former. The noodles present a state of incompatibility in the story, and it was Deborah that caused this state to appear for the first time. On Passover, Noodles went to Deborah's house to find her-at that time Noodles had already seen how the prostitute next door offered her body for a piece of butter cake-and Deborah asked him to sit next to him and read "Song of Songs" to him. :
My beloved is white and red/His skin is like pure gold/His eyes are like dove eyes/His body is like ivory.
The noodles of the same Jewish people easily resonate, and the almost eternal love depicted in the Song of Songs gave him almost eternal hope in his heart. But Deborah broke this hope immediately. She said that he is totally beautiful, but he will always be a crippled man. So it's a pity that he will never be my lover.
A woman who gives a man his dream has the power to make a man. The life of noodles stays at that moment from now on. He used to be like all street gangsters, every day he was kidnapped and deceived, doing nothing, without shame and guilt. But at that moment he had life value. Although he burned, killed and looted with other people, his heart had no good feelings about it. He believes that the despicable behavior of his own behavior is the reason for not being able to approach Deborah. Deborah's beauty is almost sacred:
prince/how beautiful your feet are in your shoes
Everyone's life is going forward. Max's "business" is getting bigger and bigger, and he is doing his best to make more money; Deborah is constantly pursuing a better career and is unwilling to stay in the past. But the life of noodles has stagnated. For him, Deborah showed him eternal happiness, and it didn't make sense to get more. He believes that good feelings will not change over time, and that "corruption" itself is a blasphemy of goodness. And Dominic's death made Noodles believe in the eternal friendship. A friend gave his life for friendship. If you believe that friendship will deteriorate, then Dominic's death will be meaningless. Many years later, Noodles and Deborah lay on the beach at night, telling Deborah that there are two things I can't forget over time: one is Dominic and the other is you.
The absolute belief in friendship and love is the driving force for noodles to survive, but it also constitutes his prison. The pain in noodles' life comes from his inability to reconcile the gap between his ideal and reality. For this reason, he adopts an evasive attitude to face life. Everything is changing, only the noodles remain in place, so the noodles become more and more disconnected from reality. Max’s business is getting bigger and bigger, and Noodles always persuade Max not to move forward; when Max is facing a dilemma between his career and himself, he tells Max: whenever you want to lose me, just say it. He tried his best to maintain his stagnation, even when time changed and everything changed; as long as the friendship and the lover in his dreams were perfect, he didn't care whether his reality was unbearable.
However, the ideal of noodles and the ever-changing real life finally ushered in a day of break.
The rape of Deborah was Noodles' self-help in despair. For many years, he ignored the temptation of reality and stayed where he was, just for Deborah's saying: He will always be a small and vagrant, so he will never be my lover. However, on that night, he suddenly realized that his persistence could not achieve his dream. He still stayed where he was, but Deborah was constantly changing, and Deborah had gone farther and farther. Noodles in despair tried to face Deborah with the attitude of facing all the women in reality-if she was no longer the eternal goddess, then he would at least own her like a mortal woman. Apparently he failed again and tarnished the fond memories he had with Deborah. Noodles who have lost hope for love, pin everything about themselves on friendship. He is willing to accompany Max to jail, in fact there is nowhere to go: friendship must be eternal and absolute, otherwise his life will sink into a situation of no sustenance.
Max took advantage of this. He knows that noodles will inform the news for his own life, and if a few friends die for the sake of noodles, then the noodles will be fatally hit-the meaning of his life will be reduced to nothingness. Max happens to be the opposite of noodles. What he pursues is not eternity, but change. For him, only by constantly climbing up and gaining an elevated status can people be full of value. Everyone in life is nothing but a passerby of life, and only oneself is the protagonist of life. He set a big game of chess, calculated everyone, and finally stood where he hoped, but was finally defeated by another more scheming bitch-in a changing world, everything is variable, and success is nothing more than that.
At the end of the story, Noodles finally saw the truth of the world. Deborah is not the pure prince and daughter in his fantasy, she can commit herself to the nobles for her own future; Max is not the reliable brother in his fantasy, who can murder a friend who lives and die for a little money. But at this time he chose to forgive; he had to forgive. He finally saw that the only constant thing in his life was himself. He is unwilling to change himself for reasons of reality; no matter what other people do, it has nothing to do with his own choice. He returned to the Chinese theater, lit an opium cigarette, thought of his life, and laughed-laughed at the absurdity of his ideal, and laughed at the truth of his ideal.
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