Chí Phèo

Chí Phèo is one of the most famous short stories written by Nam Cao. This story, which was first published in 1941 by New Life publisher, affirmed Nam Cao's talent and showed deeply human values.

Story

One day, when a man was catching eels, he accidentally found Chí Phèo naked and pale in a skirt, and then he was brought up by the villagers. Growing up, he became a kind, strong farmer and was a tenant of Bá Kiến. The young third wife of Bá Kiến often asked Chí Phèo to massage her legs. As a result, Bá Kiến was jealous of him, so he imprisoned him. After unlawful imprisonment of 7–8 years, Chí Phèo emerged a completely different person. He became a wicked monster of Vũ Đại village. Firstly he went to Ba Kien’s house intending to slit his face for what he had done. However, Bá Kiến sweet talked the gullible Chí Phèo to be his henchman. Chí Phèo became increasingly more cruel and was always intoxicated.

One afternoon, as usual, Chí Phèo was both going^[where?] and abusing^{[clarification needed]} but no one noticed to him. He was very angry, so he wanted to destroy something in any houses in this village. He went to Tu Lang’s house (Tu Lang was a cartomancer whose wife and son had left him) while this man was drinking wine alone and enjoying the moonlight. Chi Pheo sat down and drank with him. After drinking with pleasure, he staggered out of Tu Lang’s house, but didn’t go straight to his own house but to the river bank. He suddenly saw Thị Nở, a silly, ugly woman, who usually passed by Chí Phèo’s cottage to take water, but that day she fell asleep. They spent the night with each other, then both slept deeply in the moonlight. At midnight, Chi Pheo had a stomachache and heaved up. Thị Nở took him to his cottage, made him lie on the bamboo bed, covered him with some sleeping mats then went to her house.

When Chí Phèo woke up, it had been daylight. He felt tired out. He listened to acquainting sounds of daily life outside. He thought about the past, the present and the future and felt sad. He knew he was old but still lonely. At that moment, Thi No came in bringing a pot of hot onion soup. Chí Phèo was very surprised and moved because it was the first time he had been given something by a woman. He wanted to be honest. He hoped Thi No would reconcile him with everyone.

However, because of her aunt’s disapproval, Thị Nở declined Chí Phèo’s love. Chí Phèo was broken-hearted. He drank wine to be intoxicated, but the more he drank, the more conscious he was. He took a knife to Bá Kiến’s house, killed him then put an end to his own life.

All the Vũ Đại village talked a lot about that surprising crime. The people who had power in the village were delighted of the crime. The villagers still knew that Bá Kiến had been killed but the other powerful people would not let them live in peace. In the end, Thị Nở thought about Chí Phèo and looked at her belly, then “in her head appeared an image of an old followed brick kiln and no one passed by…”

The titles of this story

• the old brick kiln.
• the perfect couple.
• Chí Phèo

The old brick kiln was the obstruction closed to Chí Phèo’s image at the beginning of the story, when he was a baby in a skirt at the uncultivated brick kiln and the last image, after Thi No hearing Chí Phèo had killed himself terribly, she remembered having lived with him as husband and wife then glanced at her stomach thinking of the old brick kiln. Perhaps there would be Chi Pheo’s boy born at this very brick kiln to “ take over his father’s work”. Thus, “the old brick kiln” was a symbol of Chí Phèo’s indispensable appearance, connected with the main topic.

“The perfect couple” let readers take notice of Chí Phèo and Thị Nở, one is the cruel monster of Vũ Đại village, one was and very ugly woman. This name is sensational and suitable with people’s liking at that time.

The topic

The topic of this story accused cruel colonial-feudal society of having deprove both human appearance and character of kind agrarian people. Moreover, Nam Cao respectfully found out and affirmed their good nature. Vu Dai village was the art place of the story. It was always dark and unpeaceful with drastic conflict of different classes. That was a small image of Vietnamese villages before the August revolution.

The character

Ceramic statue of Chí Phèo and Thị Nở, Bát Tràng Porcelain

Chí Phèo’s life could be divided into three stages : Stage 1 : Chí Phèo was a good farmer but was imprisoned due to Bá Kiến. Stage 2 : Colonial proson helped Ba Kien to turn a kind, strong farmer into a bad monster. Chí Phèo was deproved of his human appearance. His curses were his reaction to all his tragic life. It belonged to a man who was both intoxicated and conscious and aware of his depraved lonely life.

All Vũ Đại villagers excluded Chi out of the society. As a result, both his body and soul were badly destroyed. Being oppressed, agrarian people had no other choice but to struggle by being scoundrel.

Stage 3: concentrated on the love between Chí Phèo and Thị Nở. With a generous heart, Nam Cao let Chí Phèo turn back to his human life naturally. The bowl of onion rice soup that Thi No cooked for him made him see her simple, sincere love to him. He seemed to be reviviscent and lived with his true good nature. He was dying for love and a good life.

But his love was smashed so Chí Phèo was desperate. He brought a knife going to Bá Kiến’s house. He did it consciously with deep thought: a fire of furious that his enemies hadn’t let him to be a good man had been burning smoulderingly in his body. The fire immediately flamed up when he understood the fountainhead of his tragedy. As can be seen, the death of Chí Phèo was vital because death could help Chí Phèo get rid of a monster’s life and his enemies were all of the current corrupt and cruel society. To Chí Phèo, the crave for living honestly was more treasure than his life.

Bá Kiến was a unique character created by Nam Cao’s talent of describing inner feelings. Bá Kiến appeared when Chí Phèo was intoxicated and slit his face as a protest in front of a crowd. To reach his purpose of stamping out Chí’s resent fire and making him to be a dangerous henchman, Bá Kiến used sweet talk to change the situation. Bá Kiến was quite a cruel, wicked, greedy man.