《清水里的刀子》宰杀老牛为亡人做“四十”的显形文本结构之下,隐藏着一个民间隐形文本结构,即“牛妈妈”故事原型。这使该小说超越了一般民族文学题材,实现了通过叙述动物反观人类自身的思想高度和人文关怀,它既是作家文学能深入底层民众并广泛传播的根本原因,也决定了作品的文学艺术价值。一小说的显形文本结构小说讲述了一个回族老妇人去世后,他的儿子耶尔古拜准备宰杀家中唯一的大牲老牛为母亲做“四十”(亡人安葬后第四十天忌日)的故事。整篇小说的显形文本结构可用如下简明示意图表示: Under the explicit text structure of “the knife in the water” slaughtering the cow for the dead to do “forty”, a hidden invisible text structure is concealed, that is, the prototype of “cow mother”. This makes the novel go beyond the general themes of national literature and realize the thought height and humane care of the human being through the narration of the animal itself. It not only serves as the fundamental reason why the writer’s literature can be widely spread to the bottom people, but also determines the literary and artistic value of the work. The text of a fictional textual structure tells the story of an old woman after the death of the Hui nationality, his son Hyergawai ready to slaughter the only sacrificial alien cow for the mother to do “forty” (after the funeral forty Day bogey) story. The explicit text structure of the entire novel can be represented in the following simplified schematic: