Writer Yagota Christopher was born in Kozeg, Hungary in 1935. Due to the riots in Hungary, she and her family were forced into exile and moved to the Swiss city of Neuchâtel several times. Although she wrote and published poems and plays in Hungarian in her early years, these works did not receive much response. After coming to Switzerland, she worked in a watch factory and suffered from the pain of exile. After divorcing her husband, she married a Swiss photographer and began to learn French, embarking on a French creative path. Her first novel, Diary of a Bad Boy, was published in 1986 and was a hit and won the European Book Award. This novel, together with the later "Evidence for Two" and "The Third Lie", constitutes the famous "Bad Boy Trilogy", which established the status of Yageta Christopher in the contemporary literary world.
In fact, the use of children's perspectives to write literary works is not uncommon. Oliver Twist, written by the British novelist Dickens, encountered sinister social phenomena such as child crime in London, which is still fresh in the memory. From the perspective of teenagers, Naipaul's "Miguel Street", a Nobel Prize winner for literature, records the misery and helplessness of Trinidad's Miguel neighborhood. British contemporary writer Ian McEwan has also made great achievements in this regard. His "Cement Garden" presents shocking alternative children in contemporary British society. Unlike these novels, however, Diary of a Bad Boy tells the story of twin brothers during World War II.
The special context of war gives the novel a gray tone. Because of the war, life in the city was difficult, and the twin brothers were sent by their mother to their grandmother's house to live temporarily. The twins born in the big city reluctantly accept reality and start living with their grandmother they have never met. "Grandma is our mother's mother." Such a sentence is obviously redundant according to common sense, but for the twin brothers, it is reasonable, because this is how they perceive the world and the logic. In addition, this further illustrates their estrangement from their grandmother, and also dooms friction and conflict between them.
The sloppy, stingy, vicious, and greedy grandmother was dubbed the "old witch" by outsiders, and it was rumored that she poisoned her husband to death. This vicious image is a bit like the evil witch in Grimm's Fairy Tales. Her erratic personality led to a very unharmonious relationship between mother and daughter, which also created a difficult dilemma for the twins. In her eyes, the twin brothers are "son of a son of a bitch". Living under the same roof with such a grandmother, the twins could not enjoy the happiness of reunion of grandparents and grandchildren. On the contrary, they began to learn about the journey of life alone. The harsh reality forces them to be self-reliant, to understand and adapt to the world.
Grandma lives in the border area and has relatively abundant supplies, but she sells everything to make money, and only eats the leftover vegetables and fruits. This grotesque behavior stems from her wealth-loving character. Such a grandmother would naturally treat the two grandchildren harshly and ask them to work, otherwise they would not be given food, and even drive them out to spend the night in the open air. The two unidentified children were starving. After five days of observation, they immediately learned to manage the housework and farm work and became grandma's right-hand man. They work, build bridges, and fish, but the fruits of their labor are sold by their grandmother. Not only that, but the clothes sent by my mother were also resold by my grandmother. In addition, the greedy grandmother has no concept of hygiene, never pays attention to personal hygiene, and has no time to clean up the twin brothers. Under such circumstances, they who were originally clean also became dirty and sloppy, and the degree of filth was almost the same as that of grandma.
Apart from the filth in appearance, the spiritual world of the two children also began to deviate from the norm. In order to be better able to withstand their grandmother's abuse, they decided to get stronger and practice "slap each other" and "beat each other". To combat abuse from grandmothers and strangers, they practiced insulting each other, "words are more cruel than words." This absurd logic is so plausible between these two twins. The reason why they kill each other like this is to survive in that special environment. In order to adapt to the war life, they also began to "exercise the blind and the deaf", training their sight and hearing until "no longer need to cover the eyes with a turban, and no need to block the ears with grass". To endure starvation, they "practice fasting" by not eating for two days. In order to adapt to the cruelty of real life, they "practice cruelty" and start killing. This morbid survival wisdom is hilarious, yet sobering.
Although the two children grew up miserably under the ravages of their grandmother, they were not completely discouraged. Despite the difficult conditions, the two of them overcame difficulties and insisted on reading and self-education. Using the dictionary they brought with them and the Bible they later discovered, they arranged for themselves "courses in spelling correction, composition, reading, mental arithmetic, mathematics, and memorization." The invaluable spirit of seeking knowledge allows them to maintain a wise temperament and avoid their ignorance and sinking. Combining work and study, the two "bad boys" actively respond to the changes in the world. In addition, they still retain the good side of their characters. When the neighbor's daughter "Little Rabbit" was bullied by other children, they offered to help; when they found the deserter, they did not hesitate to help, provide food, and shelter his whereabouts; when the "Little Rabbit" mother and daughter were in the cold winter When they were suffering, they provided assistance within their ability, even "stealing" and "blackmailing the priest", and condemned the extravagant messengers; even when the mean and vicious grandmother was injured and sick, they did not stand by but took good care of it. Therefore, it can be said that the war made them cruel, but under this cruel exterior, children's hearts are still innocent and kind, they have their own unique interpretation of the world around them, and they construct their own logic and good and evil. view. It was their invaluable kindness that inspired the people around them, and made the maids of the church, the owner of the shoe store and the residents of the town to care for them. Therefore, although they are separated from their mothers, they make fun in the rural misery and survive with their own unique rules of survival.
In the bumps and bumps with their grandmother, they gradually got used to this way of life, so that they were unwilling to leave the grandmother's house and escape with their mother. Because of the long-term alienation, the meaning of mothers in their lives has been diluted, and this family environment has also made them feel insecure, resulting in their indifference to family affection. The grieving mother was tragically killed by a bomb attack. Without much grief, they peacefully buried the corpse and the hole made by the bomb, understatement that "a bomb blew a big hole in the yard". This unusual calmness is even more disturbing, and it also indirectly accuses the war of destroying family warmth and breaking the emotional bond between family members. This is more pronounced and outrageous between their father and son. When they crossed the border with their long-separated father, they chose the strategy of sacrificing their father. Their father used his body to clear the way, detonating deeply buried mines and clearing the way. One of the twins fled to another country by "stepping over Dad's lifeless body", while the other returned to his grandmother's house.
Although they did not experience the bloody massacre on the battlefield, the twin brothers were not spared the tea poison of the war in the rear of the war. The soil in which they grow healthy has been ruthlessly uprooted. Childhood memories have become sinister things in the world, and to survive in such an environment, they reluctantly degenerated into "evil children". However, the writers do not simply take an abstract humanistic point of view, blaming their actions simply on "human nature": instead, she explores the growth and depravity of children in concrete social contexts. There is no doubt that the war, which is directly and indirectly mentioned in the narrative of the novel, has become the main factor, causing the originally happy family to be torn apart, the family relationship is indifferent, and the society from the perspective of children is full of various morbidities. Even the wicked grandmother, who they all despised, still had a trace of human warmth compared to the army who seized the vineyard and the soldiers who raped and molested the "little rabbit". In such an environment, the "evil" of the twins becomes their weapon and a tool for survival, and only in this way can they resist external damage.
In this way, their cruelty and morbidity also require readers to judge dialectically. They slit the throats of neighbouring wives and burned down their house with gasoline. Such crimes were originally unforgivable, but the reason they did it was to relieve the troubles of the neighbor's wife, so that she and her daughter, who was maimed and died, could be relieved. This kind of logic seems absurd and does not conform to legal norms, but in the years of war, it needs no more explanation. Therefore, the war has spread the poison, and the scope of the spread is not limited to the fighting positions; the homes in the rear are also not immune to the erosion of the war. The twin brothers' wartime upbringing deeply condemned the heinous sins of war.
Yagota Christopher, a war-torn exile, turns personal experiences into moving words. In an interview with reporters, she said that "Diary of a Bad Boy" is a work created by her own and her brother's prototypes, incorporating other people's war experiences. Through the eyes of her twin brothers, she writes about the catastrophic destruction of humankind by war. After the war, the corpse-filled positions or the devastated homes are already familiar images of disasters, and they have become a powerful tool for accusing the war. However, the novel "The Diary of a Bad Boy" starts from the perspective of "bad boys" and observes them with their eyes. , recorded in their language. The absurd and uninhibited country town shocks us and tortures the moral conscience of the world. Although the novel does not have any grand descriptions of war scenes, Yageta's language control in the novel allows a heavy work to be conveyed through the theme of children's diaries, leading readers to question and reflect in the joy and bitterness of reading.
In Yageta's pen, the image of the unnamed twins, like their names, is not clearly presented from beginning to end. This also highlights the insignificance and insignificance of individuals in the context of war, adding a layer of sadness.
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