Plot
The first of the two characters to be introduced is "You". He is described as a local tourist---"not that sort of tourist" but a backpacking one "wearing strong sensible sports shoes and a backpack with shoulder straps". He seeks out the elusive Lingshan, a sacred mountain.
"You" has long lived in the city, but yearns for a rural existence from the past He shuns the idea of settling for "a peaceful and stable existence" where one wants to "find a not-too-demanding sort of a job, stay in a mediocre position, become a husband and a father, set up a comfortable home, put money in the bank and add to it every month so there'll be something for old age and a little left over for the next generation".
"You" meets up with another wanderer, a troubled and emotional "She". And so "You"'s journey also becomes a journey into an erotic relationship. "You" also travels inwards as he explores his powers as a storyteller. Later in "You"'s story, "She" departs "as if in a story, as if in a dream".
Meanwhile, "I" is a writer and academic who travels to Sichuan after having been misdiagnosed of a terminal lung cancer. He wants to take a break and start looking for an "authentic life"—meaning the opposite of that of the state's concept of real life.
The characters' sense of humanity is revealed during their quest. "I" realizes that he still craves the warmth of human society, despite its anxieties.
Read more about this topic: Soul Mountain
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“Ends in themselves, my letters plot no change;
They carry nothing dutiable; they won’t
Aspire, astound, establish or estrange.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“If you need a certain vitality you can only supply it yourself, or there comes a point, anyway, when no one’s actions but your own seem dramatically convincing and justifiable in the plot that the number of your days concocts.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)