Different Modes of Waiting for the Same Moses: Review of Mo Yan’s “Waiting for Moses” from a Cross-Textual Perspective

LIU Ping

Volume 2 Issue 4

Mar. 2021

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LIU Ping. Different Modes of Waiting for the Same Moses: Review of Mo Yan’s “Waiting for Moses” from a Cross-Textual Perspective[J]. International Comparative Literature, 2019, 2(4): 684-711.

Citation:

LIU Ping. Different Modes of Waiting for the Same Moses: Review of Mo Yan’s “Waiting for Moses” from a Cross-Textual Perspective[J]. International Comparative Literature, 2019, 2(4): 684-711.

LIU Ping. Different Modes of Waiting for the Same Moses: Review of Mo Yan’s “Waiting for Moses” from a Cross-Textual Perspective[J]. International Comparative Literature, 2019, 2(4): 684-711.

Citation:

LIU Ping. Different Modes of Waiting for the Same Moses: Review of Mo Yan’s “Waiting for Moses” from a Cross-Textual Perspective[J]. International Comparative Literature, 2019, 2(4): 684-711.

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Different Modes of Waiting for the Same Moses: Review of Mo Yan’s “Waiting for Moses” from a Cross-Textual Perspective

LIU Ping

Fudan University

Received Date: 2018-10-22
Publish Date: 2021-03-09

Abstract

Abstract

This paper conducts a comparative study between Mo Yan’s “Waiting for Moses”(2018), a contemporary Chinese version of the prodigal son narrative, and the Torah, or the“Five Books of Moses,”and the Book of Ruth from the Hebrew Bible / the Tanakh from a cross-textual dialogue perspective. Starting with the name-change episode in the early times of the Great Cultural Revolution, Mo Yan’s work portrays over sixty years in the lives of two Chinese peasants (Moses Liu and his wife Xiumei Ma) in a northeastern village, only to reveal two typical dilemmas of contemporary Chinese society: Where is the home for a man’s soul? How to complete the Exodus for the individual and the nation-state in this world and this life? It is thus to be argued that the waiting for a Moses in Mo Yan’s allegorical story points to the motif of twenty-first-century Chinese society: such a waiting pertains to both the individual and the nation-state. As is demonstrated in the story, for the same Moses there exist different modes of waiting, and of all the possibilities, Xiumei Ma’s is still the paradigm most likely to be acknowledged and even admired by public opinions of the day.
- Mo Yan,
- “Waiting for Moses”,
- The Hebrew Bible/The Tanakh,
- cross-textual dialogue,
- Moses Liu,
- Xiumei Ma,
- Moses,
- the Exodus

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References(18)

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