When it comes to the protagonist of "A Dream of Red Mansions", the first reaction of most people must be Jia Baoyu.

In fact, "Second Master Bao" is just the "successor" of "Male No. 1". Before him, Cao Xueqin also created Jia Zhu, the eldest son of the Jia family with his own "perfect personality".

Although he died at the beginning of "A Dream of Red Mansions", he was like an "invisible hand", which promoted the development of the overall plot.

Why did Jia Zhu, who loves reading, seeks to improve, and is filial and obedient, die so early?

Wu Ying, a senior student at the School of Literature of Nanjing University, wrote "The Death of Jia Zhu" and retrieved the "protagonist script" for the "invisible male lead".

　　Yangzi Evening News/Ziniu News reporter Yang Tianzi

　　Compared with Jia Baoyu, the character of this "eldest son of Jia's house" is perfect

　　If readers don't remember who Jia Zhu is for a while, then they might as well make a memory first.

Jia Zhu is the first son of Jia Baoyu's father Jia Zheng and Madam Wang, and the "eldest son" has a stable status.

In "A Dream of Red Mansions", there are not many passages involving Jia Zhu, but the scenes that appear are in key positions. For example, in the second episode, Leng Zixing mentioned, "I entered school at the age of fourteen, and married before I was twenty. The wife gave birth to a son, and then died of an illness." In addition, in the thirty-three episodes of "Baoyu was beaten", Mrs. Wang thought of Jia Zhu from Baoyu, and sighed: "If you were alive, you would die a hundred times. I don't care either."

　　What would this "eldest son", who made everyone miss him, look like before he passed away?

In the work of Wu Ying, an undergraduate student of the School of Letters of NTU, in the work "Lost Sun Mountain Ting Xun a Thousand Miles of Horses Throwing the Soul of Xiangshui and Returning to One Soil", Jia Zhu has a "perfect character": young, intelligent, filial and obedient, and a good child in the eyes of his parents.

Because of his nostalgia for his children, he was beaten by his father Jia Zheng, and he started the "frail" mode. Finally, because he couldn't reconcile with his life, he ended up committing suicide.

Regarding Jia Zhu's death, Wu Ying wrote a rather subtle ending:

　　Jia Zhu stood up, the wind smothered her cheeks from the water, closed her eyes and stretched out her arms, she seemed to feel looser.

Leaning down, the jackdaw started to count, and the cloud shadow covering the moon was blown away by the wind.

The shadow reflected in the river was shattered by the ripples in the heart of the waves, and the water waves continued to wave outwards and extend out, as if there was no end.

　The creative process of "male lead script" is not "pleasant"

　　"To a certain extent, Jia Zhu's death manipulated the direction of the entire "Dream of Red Mansions"." Wu Ying told reporters that "Lost Sun Mountain Court Training Thousand Miles of Horses Throwing the Soul of Hunan Water and Returning to One Piece of Earth" is her own "Dream of Red Mansions" research course assignment. The writing process of constructing a "perfect character" for Jia Zhu was not "pleasant": "I felt great pain when writing such a story, because I was pushing a 'perfect person' into the abyss of death step by step But this layer of 'perfect' is all Jia Zhu's illusion. The mussel disease becomes a pearl. The world only sees the beautiful appearance of the pearl and jade, but forgets the pain of the mussel disease itself. This is trying to accommodate the intrusion of foreign objects, but it is constantly trying to communicate with itself. The long agony of the struggle."

　　"During the creation process, Teacher Miao and I once conceived of giving Jia Zhu a more 'accidental' way of ending his life: in the study, he was crushed to death by a fallen bookcase. This is also in line with Jia Zhu's design. The ending." Wu Ying is actually full of expectations for the "former hero" of Jia's residence, "If Jia Zhu did not die prematurely, his life trajectory should be to give birth to his eldest grandson, obtain a title, enter the imperial court, and wait for Jia Zheng to die. After inheriting the family business, his life will be smooth and smooth, and he will be happy and worry-free." However, Jia Zhu, who was pressed the accelerator button in his life, quickly experienced the great joys and sorrows in his life, and finally died early.

　　The process of "re-creation" involves thinking and innovation, not "nonsense"

　　Compared with Jia Zhu's story, readers are obviously more familiar with the emotional intertwining of Jia Baoyu, Lin Daiyu and others in "A Dream of Red Mansions".

But Jia Zhu's story is also of practical significance.

Taking Wu Ying as an example, Jia Zhu's tragedy is actually the failure of family education.

"Jia Zheng and Mrs. Wang, they don't care how much effort Jia Zhu has put in, but only whether Jia Zhu has achieved their preset goals. So they don't care about the real reason for Jia Zhu's failure, and simply attribute it to When it comes to 'love of children', it can be attributed to 'not working hard enough', or even to any irrelevant factor, except that it cannot be attributed to the shortcomings of his own education. In fact, Jia Zhu's tragedy may be the tragedy of family education. "

　　According to Miao Huaiming, a professor at the School of Literature at NTU, the process of asking students to write "prequels" for the characters of the Red Chamber is not "nonsense", but an in-depth reading of the original book.

"After the first piece of "A Dream Before Red Mansions", 'The Prequel of Grandma Liu', was released, netizens also had different voices. Some said it was nonsense, while others said it was disrespectful to the famous novel. But I think the acceptance of literary works There are many forms, re-creations, and even spoofs such as 'Sister Lin's crazy literature' are all forms, and there is no need to make a fuss." Miao Huaiming believes that the "re-creation" of literary masterpieces also proves from the side. In order to improve the public's familiarity with "Dream of Red Mansions", "If you regard famous works as gods, you are not allowed to make any 'jokes', which in fact separates famous works from the public. Just like my research course on Red Mansions, my slogan is: serious. Funny, serious reading. Serious when it should be serious, relaxed when it should be relaxed.”