"The Story of a New Name" is the second part of the "Naples Tetralogy" by Italian writer Elena Ferrante, describing the youth of Lenon and Lila. Due to different choices, Lenon and Lila each started a different life experience. Lenon continued his studies despite huge family pressure, and was finally able to study at university for free, thus escaping from Naples; while Lila married the son of a meat factory owner. Stefano was raped on his first night. After that, he continued to fight, facing life in a destructive or disguised manner.
This is a story about how two women from poor families try to transcend their own boundaries. The author's grasp of female friendship is so precise that everyone can read their own shadow in it.
Lila is the smartest girl in the town. She teaches herself how to read. Once she becomes curious about things, she will be determined to do the best in everything. She designs the best shoes and wins easily. Over everyone in the class. Be beautiful, brave, and don't care what others think. Break the rules again and again and never obey the established rules.
"I imagined that there was a dark force hidden in the life of the story's protagonist, a presence in which the world around her was welded to her body, the color of a powder blowtorch flame, a Purple-blue tips, but soon fell to the ground as a gray lump for no purpose." This paragraph written in Lenon's novel is undoubtedly Lila.
Lenon, on the other hand, has low self-esteem and studies hard to win everyone’s favor. He discovered Lila’s brilliance and decided to imitate her and become as powerful as her. As she grew up, Lila's influence on her always existed. "What would Lila do?" often became her way of thinking when making decisions. Even the final published novel was derived from "What would Lila do" when she was a child? "Blue Fairy". But there is a very valuable trait in Lenon's character - he is good at analyzing and reflecting on himself.
The friendship between Lila and Lenon is very strange. There is mutual admiration and mutual trust, but there is also a secret rivalry and showing off. "I hope you are good, but I don't hope you are good and I am not good enough" may be such a mentality. They saw something they envied in each other and longed to possess it. Lenon would imitate many of Lila's behaviors, and Lila also longed to integrate into Lenon's circle of friends. And when they find that integration/acquisition has failed, they will focus more on showing their superiority in front of the other party, and will deliberately look for their own worth. And this friendship seems to be riddled with holes without realizing it. But the strange thing is that despite many misunderstandings and even malicious alienation and plots, they are still closely connected as one body.
"Look at how connected we were at that time. Two people are one, and one person represents two people."
"I longed to hold her, kiss her, and tell her: Lila, no matter what happens from now on, we can't lose each other."
Obviously, Stefano doesn't understand love. He may like Lila, but this love is not good for him. is not that important. But what he needs is a beautiful, decent and obedient wife who can shoulder her responsibilities as a wife and have a regular sex life.
"He will possess her rich emotions, wisdom and imagination, but he will not know how to respond, and he will waste her in vain.
The black sky is scattered with some dim The stars, the rotten earthy smell of the pond and the smell of fresh moss were covered by the sweet smell of spring. The grass was wet and the water suddenly rippled, as if an acorn, a stone, or a frog had fallen in. .
I wanted to humble her to alleviate my own frustration.
She thought about the past. He was just a person. A creature with whom she felt unable to share anything.
Stefano was now a mere name, no longer connected to the emotions and habits of a few hours ago."
I don’t think Lenon’s true love for Nino is true. Lenon’s love for Nino is more of admiration than liking. Because of this admiration, she beautified Nino’s love. All kinds of behaviors, I just hope to show a look that Nino appreciates in front of him, but this is not the most real and relaxed state of Lenon, so I think this love is not real.
As for Nino, I guess he may have found the admiration he wanted in Lenon's eyes. Lenon was his best audience. Maybe there was a mutual understanding and mutual respect, but maybe not much. .
The time Lenon, Lila, Pinozia, Nino and Blumer spent on the beach was the most free time. All five of them are temporarily freed from the constraints of their identities and roles, and are free from restraints. But as the day of Stefano and Rino's arrival approaches, Pinuccia becomes more and more sensitive. She constantly reminds herself that she loves her husband, that she cannot live without her husband, in fact because of her. She falls in love with the boy (Bloomer) who accompanies her to find coconuts.
Stefano and Rino’s weekly visits were a ritual. Pinuccia and Lila had to dress up, eat, chat, and go about their daily routine with their husbands. sex life. But the psychological states of the two women are completely different. Pinozia enjoyed and was happy to play this role at first, but when she realized that she fell in love with Blumer, she and her husband's "good wife" Conflicts arose as soon as the characters began to cry, and she eventually cried to return to Naples and her original life. On the contrary, Lila had always been very sober, and it seemed like she was compromising her husband, but she was more like withdrawing from the world. Indifferent and cold, she fights against everything in this way
And the so-called loving couple may be eating, entertaining, and sleeping, playing the role of happiness in comparison with others. p> Lila fell in love with Nino. "It was only when I was married that I found the feeling of being someone else's girlfriend." This was really a tragedy. Lila felt that she could treat this relationship as a game. But in the end, when she asked Nino to break up with Nadia, wasn't she intoxicated with it? And Nino really chose to break up with Nadia, and this is how the subsequent story began.
Nino's encounter with Lila was a disaster. "Some people make a mistake and have a wrong understanding of themselves." Nino seemed to suddenly recognize himself. He thought he knew a lot and cared a lot. Break away. But when this love comes to reality due to the bravery of the two, Nino's cowardice and escape are exposed.
"You choose something you like, you go back to sell shoes, Sell ??sausages, but don't try to be someone else. He also brought me in as well. " He finally chose to escape. It turns out that the validity period of love covering reality is only twenty-three days. He is not worthy of Lila.
And Enzo, who has been ignored, turns out to be an amazing young man.< /p>
Lenon has a psychological dialogue: "I love them both, so I can't love myself. I can't feel my own feelings and express my own life with the same blind power as them." need".
In Naples, that poor, backward, male-dominated society, the two girls' journey to awakening their self-awareness was very painful and difficult.
"Nothing can make up for her current situation - she has made too many mistakes since she was a child, all of which led to this final mistake." This sentence can be said to point out the core of the novel, and the choice at the beginning foreshadows the subsequent paths of the two women.
Lila’s mother believed that Lila should have gone to school, and that was her destiny. However, since her husband did not agree, she could not object. “We are all at the mercy of life.” This sentence is particularly disturbing. It's sad.
Lenon also believed that Lila’s fault lay in her narration of Nino. She believed that Lila’s fault lay in not knowing how to adapt to her new identity. That is to say. All women implicitly acknowledge the unfair treatment society has given them and see it as part of a need to compromise and adapt. Maybe there was an awakening, but in the end they all succumbed to the values ??of the entire society. This is the tragedy of a society.
When I read the end of the novel, Lila left her husband, the beautiful house and the wealthy life, and went to another run-down city with her children in a dirty freezer. Here, I carried frozen pieces of red meat with the men and picked the meat for a living, but when I talked to Lenon and talked about the computer language she learned at night, I knew that this was the time when she looked fascinated. It's Lila, Lila never gives in, she always persists in her own way. Despite her resistance, she was the one who stayed awake from beginning to end.
"Her life is full of all kinds of good or bad things, thrilling things, which are no less than everything I have experienced. Time just passes by meaninglessly, and we meet occasionally. It’s wonderful, just to listen to the crazy voice in another person’s head, and the recollection of this voice in another person’s mind.”