A Formal Analysis of “The Accident” And “Buying Fishing Rod for My Grand Father” By Gao Xingjian

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A Formal Analysis of “The Accident” And “Buying Fishing Rod for My Grand Father” By Gao Xingjian

Formal Analysis is a kind of visual description that explains visual structure of the manner in which particular visual elements are arranged and their role within a composition.  Gao Xingjian’s Short Story “The Accident” is about an accident which happened on the Chinese streets on the front of a radio repairs shop. When one man on a bicycle was headed to a bus the driver began stepping on his breaks. However, the bus did not stop and the result was a tragic accident where the man on the bicycle was knocked down. Witnesses recounted that the man upon realizing that the bus was headed on his way pushed the baby carriage out of the bicycle. He died on the spot upon being hit by the bus but the baby was found  safe and sound (Xingjian 1377-1379).

People who had not witnessed the accident started asking themselves questions such as: “Why didn’t the child save his father by pushing him out of the way” (Xingjian 1379-1382). However the truth of the matter was that the child was too young to attempt such a feat. The busy bodies who did not witness the accident were just but quick to judge without getting a full account of the accident.  After the accident soil was placed over the blood by a police officers, this was later washed away by the street cleaners and people continued with their lives oblivious of the life shattering event that had occurred.

Throughout the story the accident as is with his painting “the Oblivion” Xingjian was basically stating a sequence of events even as they occurred. He did not make any statement or passing across any particular message through the story because as he asserts there is no need for humanity “to turn life’s tragic accidents into statistics …for this is a job of the traffic safety department” (Xingjian 1384).

He was essentially connecting an accident’s events that occurred outside a radio repair shop. It is possible to conclude that Xingjian was attempting to make use of this story in order to define his writing. He did not want to come out with a formal statement or create a disturbance in government.  He just wanted to describe things in black and white as is with his painting “the Oblivion” where he states in a Harvard interview that” where words fail paintings begin” and let people draw conclusions from the events themselves. Through his painting and art work “the Oblivion” Gao tries to depict the socio-cultural transformations in the society. The picture is just as ugly as the events in the accident are but as much as it is ugly people just hav.............