“The Old Gun” by Mo Yan starts off with a man investigating an old warped gun getting ready to try and shoot some ducks, but when he goes to pull the trigger he starts thinking about how this gun was the one who killed his father and the his mother cut part of his finger off for picking up the gun. Then he does pull the trigger, but the gun does not fire. In the story it mentions how the ducks are mockingly looking at him as if he was incompetent. After his failure he remembers the story of how his dad died and how it was a very common story around the village. His dad ended up getting in a fight with an officer who threated to kill his dad, but decided not to. His dad then rushed the officer threw his gun in the ditch and kicked him into it also. Then his dad goes back to his house and gets the gun that his grandma used to kill his grandpa Then his dad proceeds to go out of the house and load the gun. He tries to commit suicide but fails at first. Again there are ducks looking mockingly at them. He then pulls the trigger a couple more times until it fires and killing himself. Then we learn the story of when his grandma killed his grandpa. His grandma was a very hard worker and was able to own a good bit of land. His grandpa though was not a good person he gambled a lot. Eventually his grandma got really sick and while she was sick his grandpa went off gambling all of their assets away. When she gets better she confronts and kills him. Then back in the present he wonders why the gun wont fire and tires to fire it again. This time it does fire. Then he topples down and it seems as if the ducks are piling on top of him like boulders. He cant open his eyes or breathe and that’s where it ends.
I think the gun it this is representing a lot of pain and hatred in this story. Just the description of how twisted and distorted it looks shows how not normal it is. A quote showing this is “The gun lay there twisted like a hibernating snake;”(126). The main character I think was drawn to gun due to how mysterious and taboo it was. It killed his grandfather and his father. I feel like he kind of went over the edge when he lost his finger. He had a really strong desire for meat for some reason. I think he just wanted a reason to try and use the gun. The ducks are a constant between the interaction with him and his dad. Like his father he also failed to fire the gun on first shot. And by the end I’m assuming he is dead whether he tried to shoot himself or not. I’m pretty sure he did shoot himself. So this gun is at the center of his grandfather, his father, and his death.
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