Red Scarf Girl: A Memoir of the Cultural Revolution by Ji-li Jiang - Essay Example

Discuss Ji-li Jiang's conflict between her support of communist ideals and her support of friends and family. This book begins in the year 1966. Thiswas a time of great upheaval in China. It must have felt, especially to a young girl, as if the whole world was being rolled up and a new one laid out in its place. 'The future had been full of possibilities. Now I was no longer sure that was still true'. (Ji-li Jiang:18) Chairman Mao Zedong was busy cutting people's ties to the old China of the past and had enlisted high school and college students, known as the Red Guards, to help him in this brutal task. The entire country was being thrown into chaos. Schools and hospitals closed down. Factories and businesses came to a halt. The break out of violence and injustice was becoming more and more common. And perhaps worst of all, families were being broken up, members were being forced to betray and turn on one another, former friends and neighbors were turning away and abandoning those who became victims of the chaos to their pitiful fate. Ji-li, the protagonist is a twelve year old 'golden girl' of Communist China. She is clever, pretty and popular in school. Her very name means 'lucky and beautiful' (Ji-li Jiang:1) in Chinese and it appears as though the careful thought paid by her parents in naming her predicted her fate accurately. She loved China and the Communist party. 'Heaven and earth are great, but greater still is the kindness of the Communist Party; father and mother are dear, but dearer still is Chairman Mao' (Ji-li Jiang:2) However, all of this disappeared like a shattering window when Chairman Mao' Cultural Revolution turned everything Ji-li held dear onto its head. One of the central targets of the new regime was the idea of the 'four olds' (Ji-li Jiang :28-29) which China's society must be purged of. The things that used to be respected and valued have become things of ridicule. When her family is targeted and her home ransacked, Ji-li realizes that her place in the world has changed completely. Everything she used to be proud of has become a liability to be ashamed of and to hide. Even her family, which used to occupy the center of her life and form the foundation of her belief and support of the Communist ideology is now a great danger to her wellbeing. Her family is a firm part and example of the 'four olds,' old ideas, old cultures, old customs and old habits. Being part of this family and this class makes Ji-li a target and a victim in the new society. Evidence of her paternal grandfather's past reveals him, and thus his whole family, as 'filthy capitalists' and perhaps worse, as landlords. In the context of China's economic history, this revelation is a disaster. For the next three years her family become outcasts. They are labeled as members of tainted class. Ji-li and her siblings, being the children of capitalists and full members of their class become 'black whelps' and are spared none of the hardships and tortures of the rest of their family. They become pariahs, reviled by friends and neighbors, with no where to go and no one to turn to. While her mother's health deteriorates and her family begins to collapse all around her, Ji-li's father is taken to prison and the family become even more condemned and isolated. The ugly characteristics of the new regime, that causes students to renounce unpopular teachers and parents to fear their own children's condemnation become ever more apparent. (Ji-li Jiang:265-272 epilogue) In a strange way however, this trial of her family, brings Ji-li closer to her family than she ever could have become had none of it happened. She is marked as a member of her family, and must bare this mark everywhere she goes and with everyone she meets. The situation is analogous to that of the Jews during the holocaust who reported becoming more Jewish and having their identity cemented by the ordeal and common hardship they experienced together. Ji-li know's she is a part of her family in a way perhaps more real than most people ever experience. She is linked to them in the humiliation and deprivations, in the terror and persecution that she suffers along with them. This is what makes her an ever-closer part of her family. If hardships bring us closer to God, then the victimization of a family will either unite that family in a way that nothing else could, or tear it apart forever. And I believe this truth is at the heart of the novel. The desperate and confused attempt in the police station to have her name changed and thus separate her fate from that of her cursed family amplify this dilemma. Ji-li must sever all links with her family and completely abandon them forever, or remain with them through hell and back and die with them at the end. There is no in between option for her. The political situation has forced this dire ultimatum on her and there is no way around it. At the climax of the story she again has the chance to sever all links from her family. This is not in a formal legal sense, that is, by having her name changed, but in a far more real and spiritual sense. She must denounce her father and condemn him to his faith, and go on to lead the successful life she yearned for with her beloved Communist party, or sacrifice all that she dreams for herself, and remain true to her family and herself. 'this battle would be even harder because our enemieswere inside ourselves.' (Ji-li Jiang: 28-29) She chose her family. In an atmosphere when all sacredness and decency have been thrown away, she stood up for humanity and society, and its most basic building block, the family. In the end I think she did not abandon her Communist ideals either. While she may have realized the fallacies of the political reality, the things she held dear in the ideology, she remained true to. Therefore, there is no contradiction and she was faithful to her love of both family and the Communist ideal1. Bibliography Ji-li Jiang, Red Scarf Girl: A Memoir of the Cultural Revolution, Harper Collins 1999 Interview with Ji-li Jiang: http://www.harperchildrens.com/hch/parents/teachingguides/jiang.pdf Read More