Storytellers

Great Speech Project- Rhetorical Analysis
This was an acceptance speech given on December 7, 2012 by Mo Yan in front of the Swedish Academy, receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature. Mo Yan’s obvious purpose is to accept his prize and tell of the many stories of his past that brought him to this point. He repeatedly reminds his audience that he is a story teller and this use of anaphora continues throughout much of his speech. Mo Yan spends the beginning talking about his “clearest memory”, his “most remorseful memory”, his “most painful memory.” As he talks about the time he spent growing up, he also alludes to the writings of the American William Faulkner and Columbian Gabriel Garcia Marquez and how they inspired him to develop his individual style. I thought that he made a very interesting metaphor in comparing them, saying that “They were a pair of burning furnaces; I was a block of ice. If I got too close to them, I would dissolve into a cloud of steam.” This was very vivid imagery and helped me understand that though Mo Yan was inspired by these authors, he didn’t want his writings to be stifled under their influence.
Through the many stories he tells about his childhood growing up in China, we get a great sense of the ethos of Mo Yan. He gives us great background into how I grew to love telling stories and eventually writing them down on paper and now receiving a Nobel Prize for it. Though his clear purpose may have been to thank the academy for his prize and write about his childhood and journey to arrive at this point, there is much more hidden purpose than what is seen at face value. Mo Yan is very against having to stick to the status quo and general expectations of him. He is writing to fight for his own right to have an opinion that differs from everyone else. One example we found of that was artists and writers, such as Ai Wei Wei being thrown into jail for opposing the Chinese government. In fact, Mo Yan was under a lot of controversy for not fighting for the release of Liu Xiaobo who was recently arrested. Mo Yan admittedly has difficulty with “writing novels that deal with social realities” because he thinks that too much politics will stifle the development of literature and not allow it to take its full effect, which he truly believes in. He tells one story of 8 men who were stuck in a rundown temple during a terrible storm. After believing that he was the reason for the storm one of the men was forced to leave to “accept his punishment”. Promptly after he left, the temple collapsed around the remaining men. I think that this is a metaphor for Mo Yan’s right to disagree with the majority. He is saying that if someone stands out in a group, be it for a legitimate reason or otherwise and are forced to leave because they are different, then those who removed him will suffer for being selfish. It is clear that Mo Yan’s set of morals changed after the grief filled death of his mother. Previously, he was very much under her influence and saw her opinion as almost law. Now that she is gone, Mo Yan seems to be struggling with finding his place in society, wanting to be able to have differing opinions, or at least the right to and also dealing with the social conflicts he faces and how to effectively convey that through his work. This speech, in my opinion, is only the beginning of his journey, taking us on a ride of his development of ethos through his stories and vast metaphors.