喊聲振天 Give Me Back My Living Master
好八戒,即脫了皂錦直裰,束一束著體小衣,舉鈀隨著行者,二人努力向前,不容分辨,徑自把他石門打破,喊聲振天,叫道:「還我活唐僧來耶!」好八戒,即脱了皂锦直裰,束一束着体小衣,举钯随着行者,二人努力向前,不容分辨,径自把他石门打破,喊声振天,叫道:「还我活唐僧来耶!」
逐句解 Line by line
A fine Bajie he was: he stripped off his black brocade cassock, hitched up the small clothes about his body, raised his rake and went after Pilgrim. The two of them pressed forward with all their strength, allowing no argument, and simply smashed his stone doors in, with a shout that shook the sky, crying, "Give me back the Tang Monk alive!"
Bajie stripping to his undershirt is the novel's shorthand for a man who means it. 隨著 takes 著 as zhe, following on continuously. The shout at the end turns on 還 as huán, to give back — the only place in this chapter that character is not the ordinary still or yet. And the demand is for the master ALIVE, from a man who has just buried his head.
The single word for give-back carries the whole grief of the passage. Bajie has just performed a burial and he is now hammering on a door demanding the living man, which is not a negotiating position. It is a refusal to accept what he has done.
The novel marks the reading for us by never using that sense of the character anywhere else in the chapter. Seventeen other times it means still or yet. Here, once, it means hand him over.