原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
且聽下回 And So the Chapter Closes
畢竟不知怎麼救得唐僧,且聽下回分解。毕竟不知怎么救得唐僧,且听下回分解。
逐句解 Line by line
畢竟不知怎麼救得唐僧,且聽下回分解。
毕竟不知怎么救得唐僧,且听下回分解。
And in the end there is no knowing how the Tang Monk was to be rescued; give ear to the next chapter, and it shall be told.
救得: 得 is dé, marking can or cannot — "how he might be got out." 分解: 分 is fēn, "to divide and explain." This is the formula that closes every chapter of the novel, and it is kept here in a passage of its own.
The storyteller's closing formula, unchanged from the hundred other chapters that carry it. Its job is to leave the audience hanging, and Chapter Forty-Eight is one of the places where it earns its keep: the protagonist is under a stone lid at the bottom of a river, the three who might get him out are standing on the bank with their weapons, and nothing whatever has been resolved.