Balzac And The Little Chinese Seamstress

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In the novel ‘Balzac and The Little Chinese Seamstress’, the author Dai Sijie shows off the transforming power of literature in many of his characters. The power of Balzac's words greatly enriches the lives of the three main characters. The discovery of Western Literature enables them to be uplifted from the dullness of their everyday life. The Little Seamstress was quite possibly the character who was most affected by the literature. Luo had wanted to change her with the literature, to make her a more civilised person. “With these books I shall transform The Little Seamstress. She’ll never be a simple mountain girl again.” [P.94] The lessons that Luo had taught her made her gain more from the novel than he did. They had inspired her to change…show more content…
Even though he loved the Seamstress, he thought lesser of her and wanted to change her so she would become more ‘civilised.’ The discovery of the books gave Luo the opportunity to educate the Seamstress. He believed that by reading to her, it “would have made her more refined, more cultured,” [P.57]. “He touched the head of this mountain girl with an invisible finger, and she was transformed, carried away in a dream.” [P.58] Luo’s metaphor concerning Balzac had unfortunate consequences on the future of his relationship with the Little Seamstress. Luo had been desperate to change her, and he had succeeded, but the direction of the transformation is ironically beyond his control. His destruction of the book is an attempt to destroy the characters and their lives that had influenced the Little Seamstress’ departure. The literature had made him arrogant, affecting him in a more negative manner than it did any other…show more content…
In the beginning of the novel, he describes the events that happen briefly, never going into full detail. “There was nowhere for them to go, for there was no conceivable place where a Romeo and his pregnant Juliet might elude the long arm of the law, nor indeed where they might live the life of Robinson Crusoe attended by a secret agent turned Man Friday. Every nook and cranny of the land came under the all-seeing eye of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which had cast its gigantic, fine-meshed net over the whole of China.” [P. 160] However, this passage, he has used his imagination that was influenced by the novels, and has pictured himself, Luo and The Seamstress in a variety of situations inspired by literature. In this quote, Ma has used his experience in reading to help him mentally escape from the current predicament, indicating the difficultly of living in an oppressive

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