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Criticism of Competitive Examination System in Ngo Tat To's Novel The Tent and The Bamboo Bed
The research of the novel The Tent and the Bamboo Bed (Lều chõng) is topical because, on the one hand, it is a story told by a witness about the system of competitive exams in the last years of its existence, and on the other, it shows the assessment of this traditional institution in Vietnamese contemporary literature.
Research methodology. The task of this work is to show as fully as possible the author's attitude to the institution of competitive exams and the Confucian heritage of the past in the novel The Tent and the Bamboo Bed, as well as to describe the methods with which the author criticized the examination system of traditional Vietnam.
To tackle this task, we resorted to description and literary analysis of various aspects and levels of this novel.
Research materials. The text of the novel The Tent and the Bamboo Bed in Vietnamese and its translation into Russian. All quotations are taken from the Russian edition of the novel.
Research procedure. In the course of the work the following points have been analyzed: author's descriptions of separate episodes in which comic and bitter notes can be traced; images of students and Confucian scholars appearing on the pages of the novel; descriptions of the hero's interior life and self-consciousness, his statements and behavior; separate statements of secondary personages expressing the author's position; the title and objective world of the novel; its plot and composition.
Conclusions. In the novel The Tent and the Bamboo Bed Ngo Tat To shows the inefficient and fallacious character of the institution of the competitive examinations in traditional Vietnam. Created as a means of selecting the most talented people in the country for service to the Emperor, these exams not only created loopholes for promoting mediocre and cunning people, but quite often nipped in the bud the talents of the most decent and capable persons and broke their lives. The formal nature of the examination rules and subjectivity of examiners gave birth to heartaches among aspirants, and heavy burdens and privations connected with the competitive exams caused physical torture. Practically all elements of the novel are aimed at criticizing the competitive examinations system.
However, the author does not break fully with the past. Having created the images of ideal Confucian scholars brought up by the very same system, which the author criticizes, he seems at the same time to say that we have something to learn from the past