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Imagine living life as if it were a dream. You continue on the journey through piles of flowers that lead to falling leaves of the autumn time. Eventually you reach the falling leaves, and see some trees wither and others die... those that die represented that some good things in life leave after downfalls.

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In Gao Xingjian's "One Man's Bible," the author speaks with the intention of convincing the audience that there is no true meaning behind human existence through the perspicacious tone of the narrator; Xingjian initiates the fearful, anxious, and hopeful moods through his writing piece in hopes of using empathy to inspire the audience to continue on through their sorrows and feelings of hopelessness.

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“You just walked out of their shadows… and are now in a vast emptiness and tranquility”

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- Perspicacious tone (directive speech and diction)
- use of connections by incorporating personal past experiences
- Freud: shadows represent protection from the truth
- fear of the unknown

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- description of being unable to breath creates an anxious feeling
- breathing is essential to life
- life has no meaning
- perspicacious tone - everyone goes through the dream in the same way

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"On losing awareness and consciousness life suddenly ends, allowing no further thought and no further meaning"

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- negative (pessimistic) diction - "no" is repeated - losing hope
- no meaning to life - no reason to live
- the idea of life ending on it's own is a well-known fact
- perspicacious tone has Xingjian speaking with authority
- idea that everyone will die anyway and there is no true reason to live

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“The slightest ailment made you worry that it was an incurable disease and when you fell ill you would think up all sorts of nonsense and be stricken with terror”

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- reader's response: personal experiences with falling ill and undergoing the healing process
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It is as if you are falling in an abyss, this sensation of falling was often present in dreams during childhood and you would wake in fright drenched in perspiration”

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"You don't know what other things you will do or what else there is to do"

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- no purpose to life
- negative diction to create a feeling of incapability
- readers see their life with no finish line result besides empty darkness in death
- perspicacious tones comes into play by directing the emotions and thoughts of the readers through d

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"he is like the trunk of a tree but has no shadow, and the horizon between the sky and the earth has vanished."

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- psychological lens - God is real - he is the only thing you see after you die - focal point - entire background blurs out
- speaks with a perspicacious tone as if he has died before and comes back to life to tell everyone about the afterlife
- creates a feeling of anxiety in the thought of the afterlife (the unknown)
- detail: starts with familiar, day-to-day items in the world and takes away the beauty of them to show that the good things in life are gone after you die
- diction: the word vanished is a dramatic and quick way of leaving, so it is like your existence vanishes with the horizon, creating an anxious feeling of disappearing into the unknown

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"it is you in his consciousness, and from this he is able to gain some ephemeral happiness."

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- belittle human existence - pawns of His game of chess
- "ephemeral" - short and momentary - once you are no longer useful you are rid of

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"Existence is actually a gesture, a striving for comfort, stretching the arms, bending the knees, turning around, to look back upon his consciousness."

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- syntax: many pauses, short breaks, creates a paced read through the line, loss of motivation, no meaning in life
- to Xingjian, life is like constantly begging for another day by trying to prove they are worth it to God

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Xingjian uses the nostalgic fears of death, anxious thoughts of possibilities, and hopeless speculations of the future of the readers to convince them that life has no meaning, but finishes to say that life is still worth living to reach the point of an afterlife.