Through the Lenses of Four Eyes

Sijie uses the symbol of Four Eye’s glasses to represent education.  Four Eyes is the most educated person on the mountain: he comes from an educated family, his mother is a poet, and he not only can read but has a secret stash of books hidden in his house.  In addition, he is also the only person on the mountain with glasses.  Although his glasses break in a farming accident, he still has to continue his daily tasks, carrier bundles of rice to the village. Even before the task, the author describes him as “lost and stricken, even before he had hoisted the hod of rice onto his back” (Sijie 53). His glasses represent education and intelligence; without them, he is helpless.  His lack of glasses represent blindness in both real life and in education.  In addition, without his glasses he acts “as if he had been blinded.  He was so enraged that he didn’t hear our jovial shouts of greeting.  He was very short-sighted and was unable to distinguish us from the jeering peasants in the neighboring paddy fields” (Sijie 47). His glasses are the symbol of the educated, which Mao’s Cultural Revolution is trying to stamp out.  Hence, the peasants are “jeering” at him, or making fun of him, because of his educated background.  Again, he is blinded again by the lack of his glasses.

Without his glasses, Four Eyes is weak and vulnerable. He represents the part of China Mao is trying to eliminate.  In fact, in the farming incident, the buffalo knocked his glasses out.  Although this may have been unintentional, the buffalo represents the goals of the communist revolution: stamping out education and all intellectual liberty.

That being said, his glasses connect to the theme of intellectual liberty.  Without his glasses, he is helpless and is unable to read his hidden books, the embodiment of intellectuals in the Cultural Revolution.  Four Eye’s glasses represent education and intellectual liberty.

Locked Away

Sydney Aaron

Janie Dent

Marvin Lin

Carolyn Yih

Michaela Yip

Locked Away

“‘The way you keep yours suitcase locked up and hidden away is enough to betray your secret: you’ve got a stash of forbidden books’” (49).

“But Jean-Cristophe, with his fierce individualism utterly untainted by malice, was a salutary revelation. Without him I would have never have understood the splendour of taking free and independent action as an individual. Up until this stolen encounter with Romain Rolland’s hero, my poor educated and re-educated brains had been incapable of grasping the notion of one man standing up against the whole world” (110).

In Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, Dai Sijie uses the suitcase in two forms: to illustrate Mao’s actions to confine and restrict knowledge in China, as well as the ability of books to enhance our lives and freedoms.

The suitcase that locks the books is similar to Mao locking in the people of China to prevent outside contamination of individualism, leading to loss of new ideas and freedom. He attempts to rid the country of Western sources, such as books, and anyone caught with them will suffer serious consequences. This is parallel to how Four Eye’s suitcase keeps Luo and the narrator locked out, and both ideas restrain the accessibility to intellectual freedom. The suitcase being “locked up and hidden away” symbolizes the information in the books being confined from the rest of China.

On the other hand, once the suitcase is open, the narrator is able to think in a way that was unimaginable for his past self and the peasants in the village. He is exposed to a new perspective that allows him to understand the rights of the individual.

The suitcase demonstrates a loss of the great knowledge the Chinese once had access to in their lives before, but also impacted aspects in their lives, such as their relationships. Once they discover the suitcase, Luo and the narrator noticed some distrust in their friendship with Four-Eyes. He becomes angry and distant when they speak of the suitcase.

Sophisticated Piece of Wood

Key Quotes:

1. "'A toy from the city,' the headman continued, 'go on, burn it!'" His command galvanized the crowd. Everyone started talking atone, shouting and reaching out to out to grab the toy for the privilege of throwing it on the coals." (4)

• Philosophy of Mao's cultural revolution is evident in this quote.
• 'if you don't understand it, destroy it'
• didn't know what it was- therefore, felt threatened, thought that it was dangerous 
• So eager to destroy a beautiful. innocent instrument just because it didn't explicitly conform 
• intellectual liberty - cultural revolution

2. "When we were about to pass the sedan, the tailor leaned over to me, so close that I could feel his breath: "Wy-o-lin!" he bellowed, in an imitation of an English word." (23)

• emphasizes the difference between youth being reeducated and mountain people (few even knew what a violin was, and the few that did were very excited about it.)
• Western culture

Sijie uses the symbol of the violin to emphasize the tensions between the upper and lower class ideologies of life and shows how the ways of old and all the arts have been corrupted and tethered together as a problem for Mao. The violin shows the dichotomy of the upper class and lower class learning, and although he is trying to have everyone on the same plane of proletarian lifestyle, there is still a wide difference between the things that the working class and the upper classes learn and know. Intellectual liberty defines the symbol of the violin. 

Symbolism Activity - Sheepskin Coat

Symbolism - Sheepskin Coat

Quotes

• “‘[Balzac] touched the head of this mountain girl with an invisible finger, and she was transformed, carried away in a dream. [...] She ended up putting on your wretched coat on. She said having Balzac’s words next to her skin made her feel good, and also more intelligent.’” (62)
• “Then I was seized with an idea: I would copy out my favourite passages from Ursule Mirouet, word for word. It was the first time in my life that I had felt any desire to copy sentences from a book. I ransacked the room for paper, but all I could find was a few sheets of notepaper intended for letters to our parents." (58)

Analysis

The book describes how the sheepskin coat relates to the idea of intellectual liberty, the freedom to express ideas. The narrator demonstrates his own intellectual liberty when he has the sudden idea to write quotes from the book written by Balzac, Ursule Mirouët, onto the inside of the sheepskin coat. This novel is the first novel he had read in a year, if not a couple years. Furthermore, all western books are banned, yet the narrator wants to express the fact that he appreciates the novels as art, and something he would like to take interest in. These two factors make him want to write this down, as a memory, inside the only resource he has. The quote on page 62 explains how the Little Seamstress is affected by those words of the same novel. The description of how Balzac “touched the head of this mountain girl… she was transformed, carried away in a dream” demonstrates that she was touched by the deeper meaning of the words. This is emphasized by the story’s abundance of adventure, which allowed the story to carry her on an adventure through the story of the book. She also put the coat on because she feels like this will carry her adventure through the novel further than it already has, for her to relate to it and “feel” it. Also, In the quote on page 58, the narrator has a book from Four Eyes’s suitcase, which he is very enthusiastic about. This small sliver of Western culture entices them more than the Chinese propaganda.  This quote shows how the Cultural Revolution and the re-education program deprives the urban teens and the rest of the people from valuable culture and literature. The Cultural Revolution forbids all Western arts and influences, and this makes the teens hungry for a more intriguing lifestyle. Knowing that the foreign books are banned, the narrator makes the decision to “copy out my favourite passages” in order to keep the culture close to him. His desperate desire makes him “ransack the room for paper” in order to find a place to write the passages on. This choice gives him intellectual liberty from the strict order of the communist regime.

Image

The Blood of the Cultural Revolution

"A magnificent, towering tree that grows in a secret valley to the east of the Little Seamstress's village.  We made love there, against the trunk.  Standing.  She was a virgin, and her blood dripped onto the leaves scattered underneath."(60)

"They're waiting for the blood to congeal," he replied.  "It's a remedy against cowardice.  To gain courage, you must swallow it when it's still lukewarm and frothy."(94)

The Ginkgo Tree

The Buffalo

Throughout the novel, blood is shown to be a symbol of power, strength, and courage.  The headman, who is in charge of the village, has three dots of blood in his eye. It is an unusual trait that not only marks him as unique, but shows people that he has seen battle and gotten injured, and this makes people look up to him as a leader. Blood is used in a different fashion to further exemplify how the narrator looks up to Luo. After having sex with the Little Seamstress, Luo shares his experience with the narrator, describing in detail that “her blood dripped onto the leaves [of a ginkgo tree] scattered underneath.”  After he tells the story, the narrator looks up to Luo because he has experienced something the narrator has only been able to read about in books. Finally, when Four-Eyes is told he can leave the village, the headman allows him to slay a buffalo and drink the blood from its neck. It is an ancient ritual that is said to give men courage. These three alone could show the significance of blood in the novel, but the red color of blood is also the symbol of Communist China and the godlike way Mao is viewed. He has immense power in his country. The color red is even shown on the cover, with the red shoes. It is clear that blood and the color red impact the novel in a major way.

The Contrasts of The Buffalo - Symbolism

“The buffalo was still alive. I will never forget how affected I was by its long drawn-out, plaintive bellows. Under normal circumstances the bellow of a buffalo is disagreeably harsh, but on this calm late summer’s day the sound echoing through the rocky mountains was imposing and sonorous, like the roaring of a lion in a cage (93).”  

Our Symbol was the Buffalo.

The two quotes show contrasting views on hope. In the first quote, the dying buffalo represents the loss of hope by Luo and the narrator. They are losing hope for getting off the “Phoenix of the Sky.” Meanwhile the second quote illustrates hope through Four-Eyes’s actions of joy when he receives the journalist job off the mountain. He was so excited to eat the buffalo because it represents his freedom from re education. Four Eyes’ hope for getting off the mountain was fulfilled.

“To us prospective thieves, the delay was harrowing, but Four-Eyes, a fresh convert to blood-drinking, was no less frustrated: we saw him jumping up and down with excitement, raising the lid of the cauldron, dipping his chopsticks into the stew, taking out a lump of steaming meat, sniffing it, inspecting it closely, and dropping it back with a disappointed shrug (95).”

The Power of the Rooster - Symbolism

The Power of the Rooster

“We were surprised to see how the alarm clock seized the imagination of the peasants. It became an object of veneration, almost. Everyone game to consult the clock, as though our house on stilts were a temple” (13).

“The thought of the back-buckets awaiting us was so dispiriting that we couldn’t bring ourselves to get up [so Luo] slid the hands of the clock back by one hour...The sheer audacity of our trick did a lot to temper our resentment against [those who] were in charge of our re-education...In the end we changed the position of the hands so many times that we had no idea what the time really was” (15).

Luo’s alarm clock is a foreign object and a remnant of their bourgeois life. It represents the norms they used to live with and their past privileges, such as having precise time rather than judging the time of day by sunset and sunrise. The Cultural Revolution was intended to suppress those norms, and so this is the last piece of Luo’s urban life. But, because Luo has this object in his possession, it gives him an advantage over the people around him. The fact that Luo and the narrator have more intelligence makes them more cultured and informed than the people who live a simple life around them. Everyone in the village -- including the headman -- was fascinated by their unique possession from the city, and as the owners of it, Luo and the narrator could change the time to fit their wishes.

How tacky the alarm clock would look to someone in urban and modern civilization

Representation of the narrator and Luo’s old life

What the clock is like to the others

With the alarm clock, the boys have power over the time

Movies Bring Hope for the Future

Sijie uses the movies throughout the novel as a symbol to demonstrate the hope that the boys and the Little Seamstress have to escape back to civilization and aspire towards a future past re-education. They act in a hopeful manner when watching these movies, even though they display propaganda and communist themes because it is a glimpse of the civilized future they aim to have. The movies aid Luo in his discovery of his storyteller skills and further influence the boys’ optimistic views of leading a better life with this escape.

“Now and then everything would go dark and her eyes would shine like spots of phosphorus in the gloom. Then suddenly when the scene changed, her face would light up, flush with colour, and blossom with wonder” (81-82).

When the headman sends the boys once again into the city to watch a new movie in order to entertain the village, they decide to bring the Little Seamstress along. Even though they are standing behind the screen and have a diminished viewing experience, she is completely captivated by the images and moving pictures. This shows her newfound hope for a more civilized future where she is able to experience movies and literature with no limit. While she is watching her face would “light up” and “blossom with wonder” as she is beginning to understand this new world and see the future she can have. Overall, the movies are a symbol of hope for her as she thinks about leaving behind her village life and have more intellectual liberty.

“Phoenix mountain was so remote from civilization that most of the inhabitants had never had the opportunity of seeing a film, let alone visit a cinema...One day having found out when the next month’s screening was due at Yong Jing, he decided to send Luo and me to watch it” (18,19).

The headman of the village is so intrigued by the narrator and Luo’s stories the cinema in the city, that when word comes around that movies will be playing near them, the headman jumps on the chance to hear all about them. The boys are excited because it reminds them of their home.They are hopeful that this newfound freedom will eventually lead to their release from the village and re-education.

Luo and the narrator were affected by the movies in the same way the Four-Eye’s books did. Both convey hope for a civilized life for all three teenagers. While being read the books, the Little Seamstress feels intelligent, hoping to be able to read them and understand them herself someday. While reading the books, both teen boys remember what it is like to be civilized and hope to get back to how things once were, just as the movies do.

Mighty, Mythical and Profoundly Solitary

A symbol that reoccurs throughout the novel, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, is “The Phoenix in the Sky” which is the name of the mountain that the narrator and Luo were sent to be reeducated on. This metaphor is significant to the story as it represents hope and coming of age.

“The name was a poetic way of suggesting its terrifying altitude; the poor sparrows and common birds of the plain could never soar to its peak, for that has the reserve of winged creatures allied to the sky: mighty, mythical and profoundly solitary”(11). This quote is used to describe the Phoenix of the Sky, the mountain on which Luo and the narrator are being re-educated. A phoenix is a mythical bird of many colors that is known to be reborn or regenerated when it dies. It is a God-like creature, capable of flying to great heights. The phoenix is a symbol used commonly throughout the narrator’s account of his experiences during re-education. He describes the Phoenix as a solitary being, detached from the “common birds of the plain[s].” This sentiment symbolizes the isolation the narrator experiences upon his arrival to Phoenix Mountain and his detachment from his former life. The narrator's description is representative of two major themes in the book: his aspiration for liberation and his coming of age. The phoenix is a metaphor for how he must first “die,” by leaving the city, to be reborn as a phoenix. He looks up to the phoenix as becoming a better man once he survives his ordeal. It represents his hope for being liberated from re-education and becoming something great.

“Nonetheless, our home soon became the focal point of the village, thanks to another phoenix, a smaller version, miniature almost, and rather more earthbound, whose master has my friend Luo”(13). Of course, this “phoenix” is not a phoenix at all but Luo’s alarm clock. The alarm clock was a source of evasion from the boys’ tough work in the mountains because it allowed them to turn time an hour back or forward with the villagers being none the wiser. Although the alarm clock only grants them a minute degree control, it becomes a luxury in their new lives with few resources. While the smaller phoenix is merely an alarm clock, it stands for their hope to return to their homes, which demonstrates how the alarm clock and the phoenix are two intertwined symbols in the novel. Because the boys can change the time on the device, it provides them with a small amount of control over their lives. Being relocated to a place in which their lives are constantly being controlled, there are not many opportunities to live freely, but to own this phoenix that they can control, however, gives them the idea of a hope for a life that they can control more of. The “master” of the clock, Luo, is able to be dominant in a world where he is restricted to do so, and the narrator is able to benefit from these luxuries that come from the metaphorical bird, as well.

Balzac and a Little Hope

Balzac and a Little Hope

Sijie uses the symbol of books by Balzac and other French novelists to symbolize loss inspiring hope. When the narrator and Luo first read the Balzac book lent to them by their friend, their eyes are opened to the experiences they have been deprived of due to the Cultural Revolution in China. They lack the formal education and lively experiences many take for granted.  They now have the drive to live; to not die without experiencing love, sex, passion, bravery, and knowledge. This inspires the narrator and Luo to pursue a romantic relationship with the Seamstress and read more books from their friend.  Their friend keeps his library of books locked away in a secret suitcase.  This suitcase hiding the knowledge of the texts from the narrator and Luo symbolizes how the Cultural Revolution hid so many worldly experiences from them.  When they break into the suitcase to read more books, new ideas are revealed to them.  This causes them to break free from the intellectual confines of the Cultural Revolution and develop their intellectual liberty.

“Picture, if you will, a boy of nineteen, still slumbering in the limbo of adolescence, having heard nothing but revolutionary blather about patriotism, Communism, ideology, and propaganda all his life, falling headlong into a story of awakening desire, passion, impulsive action, love, of all the subjects that had, until then, been hidden from me” (Sijie 57).

“I couldn’t move, and there, stuck in the middle of the ridge, I wondered what my good friend Jean-Christophe would say if I were to turn back.  With an impervious wave of his conductor’s baton he would tell me which way to go.  He was unlikely to object to my beating a retreat in the face of death, I thought.  After all, how could I die now, without having known love or sex, without having taken free individual action against the whole world, as he had?” (Sijie 114).

Contraband Clothes

“Then I was seized with an idea: I would copy out my favourite passages from Ursule Mirouët, word for word…I decided I would write directly onto the inside of my sheepskin coat…Writing on the skin of an old mountain sheep was not easy: the surface was rough and creased and, in order to squeeze as much text as possible into the available space, I had to use a minute script, which required all the concentration I could muster. By the time I had covered the entire inside of the jacket, including the sleeves, my fingers were aching so badly it felt as if the bones were broken. At last I dozed off” (58-59).

“She ended up putting your wretched coat on (which looked very good on her, I must say). She said having Balzac’s words next to her skin made her feel good, and also more intelligent” (62).

“Your coat was resting on the flat of her hands, the way a sacred object lies in the palms of the pious” (62).

The author uses the sheepskin coat written on by the narrator to convey a symbol of intellectual liberty by illustrating the way both he and the Little Chinese Seamstress wear the words as a way of quiet rebellion against the ban on books. They all realize that the words of Balzac are a new way of thinking that goes against the revolutionary ideas they are being forced to consume, and so instead look to Balzac’s words for wisdom and hope. He completely switches their philosophy on the world and what can and can’t be done, which intellectually liberates them, hence this being a symbol of intellectual liberty.

The Narrator demonstrates intellectual liberty here because he shows how impactful the modern text which he has been exposed to has affected him. He literally wants to envelope himself in Balzac’s words and put them on something more permanent than paper. Earlier in the text, it is told that right when Luo and the Narrator finished middle school, all of the books (in exception of the Little Red Book) had been destroyed, so this being the first modern book he got to read, it impacted him greatly. His writing on the sheepskin coat represents this cultural, worldly awakening, where for the first time information he was reading, taking in, and being exposed to wasn’t about Mao or the cultural revolution, which was something that had taken over his whole life.

The Narrator displays his value for knowledge by writing in the sheepskin coat. Due to the fact that the writing in the coat would be more inconspicuous, he transcribed the passages from the novel into the lining of his coat. His thirst for knowledge and his longing for intellectual liberty drove him to smuggle the forbidden literature around with him wherever he goes. During the course of his re-education, the narrator felt deprived of intellectual liberty and the pursuit of knowledge. This desperation led him to seek out sources of intellectual stimulation, which he found in the form of the Balzac novel. This provided him with entertainment and an escape from the tedium of his everyday life.

Secrets of the Suitcase

Symbol: Four-Eyes' suitcase full of forbidden books

"When Luo switched on his torch we momentarily forgot all our carefully laid plans and stared in awe, for right there, on top of the stack of luggage, was the soft leather suitcase, glowing in the dark as though clamoring to reveal its contents." (98)

"I took the novels out of the suitcase one by one, opened them, studied the portraits of the authors, and passed them on to Luo. Brushing them with the tips of my fingers made me feel as if my pale hands were in touch with human lives.

'It reminds me of a scene in a film,' said Luo. 'You know, when a stolen suitcase turns out to be stuffed with money...'

'So, are you weeping tears of joy?' I said.

'No. All I feel is loathing.'

'Me too. Loathing for everyone who kept these books from us.'" (99)

“But Jean-Christophe, with his fierce individualism utterly untainted by malice, was a salutary revelation. Without him I would never have understood the splendor of taking free and independent action as an individual.  Up until this stolen encounter with Romain Rolland’s hero, my poor educated and re-educated brains had been incapable of grasping the notion of one man standing up against the whole world.” (110)

The suitcase of books

The representation of how books can help shape your brain and ideas

The narrator reading a forbidden book

Dai Sijie applies the symbol of the suitcase in Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress to emphasize and illustrate the impact of intellect and knowledge on the boys. To the boys, the suitcase represents everything that has been hidden from them, the whole wide world that they have never heard from or seen. The cultural revolution has taken so much information and knowledge from them. The suitcase is intellectual liberty, freedom to learn about everything instead of being fed propaganda and never knowing anything else. It gives them new ideas, ideas of "fierce individualism" and "taking free and independent action as an individual," which is very different from the classless communist dream of Mao.

From the knowledge the boys gained through acquiring the books in the suitcase, they gained a new perspective on their roles in society, and the cultural norms that they grew up with. Though the entire nation supports Mao and maoist ideals, including his views on books, the boys find themselves loathing him, and “everyone who kept these books from us”. This attitude was a dangerous one to maintain, but it was truly how the boys grew to feel. To them, the suitcase represented a symbol of the education that they were denied, and the modicum of knowledge they gained was so impacting that they adopted a completely new perspective and opinion on the society they had cherished for so long.

By Rachael Shaver, Sydney Enthoven, Avery Biczek, Lily Szalay, and Kirsten Andrews

A New Lens of Light

"One split second of inattention was enough for Four-Eyes to receive a blow to the face from the buffalo's tail, which sent his spectacles hurtling through the air. He swore and dropped the reins from his right hand and the plough from his left. Clapping his hands over his eyes, he let out a stream of abuse, as if he had been blinded" (47).

"He advanced blindly, tottering and lurching like a drunkard. At one point where the path fell away he extended a leg in search of a foothold, but his other leg, unable to sustain the weight of the hod on his back, buckled, and he fell to his knees” (54).

Sijie uses the symbol of Four-Eyes’ glasses to demonstrate the loss the Cultural Revolution has forced upon the relocated students. Four-Eyes’ glasses are one of his most defining features, especially considering that is the only name the readers ever know him by. When the buffalo breaks Four-Eyes’ glasses, he loses an important part of himself that affects his ability to read, write, and work. Four-Eyes’ glasses are a defining feature of his personality, and without them he is vulnerable and his hard-working personality disappears. When Four-Eyes is without his glasses, he “let out a stream of abuse, as if he had been blinded.” Without his glasses, Four-Eyes is basically blind, cannot function, and loses an integral part of himself. When he breaks his glasses and has to work without them for even longer, he advances “blindly, tottering and lurching like a drunkard.” The glasses are one of the things that connects him to his old intellectual life from the city, but the breaking of them signifies the loss of that intellectual part of him. When his mother sends glasses to him, he also gets the assignment from her to collect mountain songs. This renews his intellectual side, signified by the new glasses.

When he gets his new pair of glasses, we see a change in his personality. He becomes a lot more arrogant, as he also has a letter promising him with a chance to get back into the city. The opportunity for a life outside of re-education causes him to be very short-ended.  He starts reading more and an air of superiority comes over him.  Four-Eyes is grasping at every glimpse of civilized life he can.  Once his mother comes to take him home, his greater depth of knowledge than before causes him to act as if he was of more importance.  The liberty and level of intellect that Four-Eyes had developed gave him the ability to escape and have a new life.  This gave way to a new trait of his: dominance.

Phoenix of the Suitcase

Sijie uses the symbol of the suitcase to demonstrates the lack of intellectual liberty during the Cultural Revolution and hope that liberty can bring. The suitcase contains western literature, but is locked away and kept only to Four-Eyes, and is rarely opened. The books and suitcase are a representation of the intellectual liberty that most people lacked and that the Cultural Revolution was trying to do away with. It also shows the true value of intellectual liberty and how having access to the ideas of different cultures and works show the hope that intellectual liberty can bring.

“Without him, I would never have understood the splendor of taking free and independent action as an individual...my poor educated and re-educated brains had been incapable of grasping the notion of one man standing up against the whole world” (Sijie, 110).

In this quote, Sijie shows the lack of intellectual liberty during re-education and the Cultural Revolution in China. Before the narrator discovered the books and read them, he did not have a sense of purpose or individualism without intellectual liberty. The books opened up a door for him, empowered him to be himself, and take his own actions. Though the books were precious, the fact that they were locked away and chained is a metaphor for how the Mao banned all literature save The Little Red Book, and forced beliefs and ideas into the people, trying to take away their identity.

“I took the novels out of the suitcase on by one, opened them, studied the portraits of the authors, and passed them onto Luo. Brushing them with the tips of my fingers made me feel as if my pale hands were in touch with human lives” (Sijie, 99).

This quote illustrates how precious the books are to Luo and the narrator and how repressed they were during the Cultural Revolution. Since they are both being forced into re-education as a result of the Communist party’s Cultural Revolution, Luo and the narrator are using the books from the suitcase as their last form of intellectual liberty. It is their only way to continue learning since they have been stripped of knowledge and rights due to the Cultural Revolution, so the books are very significant to them. Because they never had access to any of these books or the ideas presented in them, the books are to them as precious as “human lives,” something that makes life worth living. To them, the suitcase and what it contains is a representation of hope and a better life.

While the suitcase emphasizes the repression of the Chinese people under Mao, it is also a symbol of liberty and hope.

Books and Their Transformative Power

Symbolism: Books

Elena, Emma, Sanjeev, Robert, and Kat

Quotes:

“My sentences became more precise, more concrete, more compact as I went along. … It was like seeing a great, uprooted tree: the nobility of its trunk, the grandeur of its branches, the strength of its naked roots” (125).

“[Balzac] touched the head of this mountain girl with an invisible finger, and she was transformed, carried away in a dream. It took a while for her to come down to earth. She ended up putting your wretched coat on (which looked very good on her, I must say). She said having Balzac’s words next to her skin made her feel good, also more intelligent” (62).

***

The Western books in Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress symbolize an exposure to individualistic ideas forgotten by the Great Proletariat Revolution, allowing the characters to experience an intellectual liberty unbeknownst at the time. Under the reign of Chairman Mao, the alleged propagation of Western, capitalist, and individualist ideas through both artistic and literary works was strictly prohibited. As the Cultural Revolution progressed, the government placed less value in educating their youth, closing down schools and restricting them from accessing information through a re-education program.

As reeducated youths in the uncivilized mountain villages of China, Luo and the narrator, experience a complete lack of intellectual liberty as their exposure to culture and art is confined to the occasional films of propaganda shown in a neighboring town. However, through reading the Western books stolen from Four-Eyes, our protagonists’ eyes are opened to the novel ideas of hope, love, and individualism, all values that had been razed in the proletariat attempt at creating a united society.Thus, the books represent an opening to new ideas which had been taken away from the Chinese people.

Not only are the protagonists exposed to these complex, oft-forgotten notions praising the individual, but they are truly transformed by the books. When the Little Seamstress first reads the excerpt of Balzac etched onto the inside of the narrator’s sheepskin coat, she cannot resist putting the jacket on, to enrobe herself in the words to absorb them. The simple girl that had only ever been exposed to the culture of her little village is so touched that she cannot bear to part with the wisdom of Balzac. Likewise, the narrator is revolutionized by the blatant individualism conveyed in Romain Rolland’s novel, exposing him to the idea of the underdog, the power of the individual, and the hope of revolution.

While on the inside the narrator is affected by the book, it also affects his storytelling capabilities, allowing him to reach Luo’s status as a storyteller for the first time. His storytelling becomes as grand as a mighty tree, reaching and expanding in response to the intellectual liberty granted by the novel. Therefore, throughout Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, the value of intellectual liberty and its impact on the individual is reasserted time after time through the symbolism of the Western books.