Mo Yan characterizes Northeast Gaomi Township as a place of stark contradiction, a landscape the narrator loves and hates, which he calls the “most beautiful and most repulsive, most unusual and most common, most sacred and most corrupt, most heroic and most bastardly, hardest-drinking and hardest-loving place in the world” (4). This clash of extremes shapes the book’s portrait of morality in a world ruled by chaos and raw survival. In Red Sorghum, heroism grows out of the same force that drives brutality, a primal energy that ignores conventional ethics. Commander Yu Zhan’ao carries this tension, since his patriotic violence and criminal cruelty arise from the same instinctive will to live and to claim power during social collapse.

Yu Zhan’ao’s life shows how that moral ambiguity works. He enters the book as a man “destined to become a legendary hero” (3), yet his path relies on acts that come from personal desire and ruthless calculation. He starts as a sedan bearer, and his passion for Dai Fenglian pushes him to kill her husband, Shan Bianlang, and father-in-law, Shan Tingxiu. The book treats this double murder as a cunning crime that frees Dai Fenglian from the strictures of the patriarchy. Years later, he leads resistance actions against the Japanese and builds a reputation as a defender of his homeland. His actions as a commander echo his earlier banditry, since the same violent impulses, loyalties, and charisma shape his leadership. When he executes his uncle, Big Tooth Yu, for rape, he performs a harsh act in the name of military justice, which shows that he directs violence at family as well as enemies. The narrative presents this path without condemnation and frames Yu Zhan’ao’s evolution as a response to a lawless world where power and survival matter more than abstract moral ideals.

This world treats brutality as a shared language among the various factions of resistance fighters, instead of a trait attached to the Japanese antagonists alone. The execution of Uncle Arhat, who is skinned alive before his neighbors, creates a scene of horror that echoes other violent moments carried out by characters. For instance, Yu Zhan’ao and his fellow bearers beat a highwayman to death during Dai Fenglian’s wedding procession. Later, Yu Zhan’ao’s unit, Pocky Leng’s detachment, and Little Foot Jiang’s regiment turn on each other in repeated clashes. Their rivalries and struggles for supplies break apart any idea of unified resistance and lead to the disastrous ambush at the Black Water River, where their lack of cooperation destroys them. Violence determines survival or defeat for every group in this landscape, regardless of allegiance. This constant cycle of aggression shows that the book treats violence as a basic tool for navigating a life-or-death world. Heroes and villains alike use violence to achieve their goals, erasing the hard boundary between them. The narrative leaves its characters without fixed moral categories and instead shows them living with a fierce drive to love, fight, and endure.