Retrospective structure and self‐reckoning: Mo Yan's The Crocodile and Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman in comparative perspective

Abstract

Mo Yan's The Crocodile stands as a landmark work in contemporary Chinese drama. While scholars have attended to the influence of Western dramatists such as Sartre and Brecht on this play, few have probed its deeper affinities with Ibsen's late masterpiece John Gabriel Borkman . Adopting a parallel study approach, this article takes “the dramatization of desire and moral self‐reckoning” as its tertium comparationis , examining the structural connections between the two works across three dimensions: triangular relationships, retrospective structure, and mirror characters. The analysis reveals that these three dimensions collectively constitute a dramatic mechanism through which guilt is generated, disclosed, and judged. On this basis, the article advances “the poetics of self‐reckoning” as a critical concept, identifying four constitutive elements of self‐reckoning drama: the guilty subject, the retrospective mechanism, mirror externalization, and open judgment. Though the two protagonists reach divergent ethical endpoints—Borkman dies in self‐justification while Shan Wudan attains a measure of redemption through death—they together illuminate the cross‐cultural significance of “self‐reckoning drama.”