Balzac And The Little Chinese Seamstress Analysis

838 Words4 Pages
A common impetus for reading fiction is hope that an imaginary adventure in something unknown will provide temporary, but powerful liberation from one’s own life; but, rarely, does reader consider the permanent internal souvenirs reaped from each hour submerged in the fantastical. In the novel, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress Dai Sijie depicts the story of two adolescents from Chinese cities, Luo and an unnamed narrator, exiled to a rural mountain village for reduction during Mao’s cultural revolution. There, they are forced to do hard labor and live as the local people do until all bourgeois and urban tendencies are gone. Although the practice is illegal, through their re-education the boys receive, steal, and read western literature from…show more content…
In Mao’s China, pregnancy in an unmarried woman is illegal and, as a result, had the baby been born the seamstress would not have been able to keep it. Unfortunately, at the time she discovered she was pregnant Luo was away in the city visiting his sick mother. Leaving merely the narrator, to help the Little Seamstress’ with her dilemma by bribing a gynecologist with a Balzac novel to perform the abortion on her. After the producer is over, he suddenly decides to include novel chronicling the life of a talented composer, Jean Christophe, with his gratuity. The narrator explains, “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 or independent action as an individual ... The deal we had made was that I would give him [the gynecologist] our copy of Ursule MIrouet, but upon reflection, I decided to extend his reward to include the book I treasured most of all -Jean Christophe-, which had been translated by the same Fu
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  • Balzac And The Little Chinese Seamstress Analysis

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    lasting effect on the characters of Dai Sijie’s novel, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, as the narrator experiences the impact of new emotions, Luo understands the value of knowledge, and the Little Seamstress harnesses the power of making choices. As aforementioned, the Western literature that the narrator encounters give him a sense of new emotions that builds up on his positive character. For instance, after reading Ursule Mirouët, by Balzac, the narrator possesses the desire to copy from

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