The poem is one of the best representations of what is commonly known as the “misty poem,” a sub-genre of poetry arising in the wake of the Cultural Revolution in the late 1970s. Misty poetry challenges both the orthodox stance that literature and arts should serve proletarian politics as well as the conventional form. In it, one finds obscure and hermetic images and metaphors. But with the brief introduction of what happened during the Cultural Revolution as well as the dominant principles for literature and arts prior to the Revolution, one can find the answers to the images and metaphors in The Answer. The first question is, “answer” to what ? It is an answer to the orthodoxy and the answer is “I-do-not-believe.” The “In in the poem loses faith in the convention as he refuses to believe that the sky is blue and thunder has echoes; instead, he is a challenger, ready to face his last judgment. The courage exemplified in the bravery of the protagonist is an elevation of the individual will over the societal forces, which is totally unprecedented in any literary work before i980s. Equally unprecedented is the centering of “I,” an individual whose emotions, thoughts and desires become the focus of the work.
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