Little Chinese Seamstress

387 Words2 Pages
The Characterization of Four-Eyes in Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress Four-Eyes is at first described as a pathetic, cowardly character, who upon hearing that he may return home, reveals a completely different aspect of himself. The changed Four-Eyes is characterised as a despicable youth of vengeance, betraying the trust of his only friends. Four-Eyes is presented from the outset as a disloyal and machiavellian boy. His friendship with Luo and the narrator was only based on his perpetual fear. Even a knock on his door as he was having a meal with his friends was enough to make him ‘spring to his feet, and quickly hide the pan in the corner as if it were contraband.’ When Luo and the narrator discovered the suitcase he showed “a flicker of panic” that then “vanished behind his glasses as he composed his features into a smiling mask.” His character is set up through his appearance: his short-sighted ‘bulging eyes’ reminds the reader of an archetypal antagonist and prompts distrust. His friendship with Luo and the narrator was expediently terminated when his mother releases him from the village unveiling his deceit throughout the story. “I stayed friends with them because I thought you and Pa had problems…show more content…
Dai displays Four-Eyes’ attempt to escape blame for the cruel act, with specific diction, “disguised as an accident” by the “perpetrator”. Four-Eyes’ scapegoat, his village headman “deliberately pushed the buffalo over a precipice” in a callous act of savagery. Dai establishes the savagery of the act with the graphic imagery of “blood pouring from the gash”, paired with the animal imagery of the buffalo “roaring like a lion in a cage”. The reader is disgusted by the irony of a the prideful connotations of a lion, in drawn out agony. The newly transformed Four-Eyes is exposed to the reader as merciless and
Open Document