How did historical events influence the ideas in
the novel? What cultural issues may have influenced, challenged, or
inspired the author?
The book Red Scarf Girl written by Ji-li Jiang, tells about
the cultural revolution that happened in China under Mao’s Dinasty from
1966-1976. One can see that the historical events influenced the novels idea.
This book is about a girl who relates her childhood during the Cultural Revolution,
and tells about the difficult decisions she had to make, for example choosing to
believe either in her family or in Mao. As the book goes on, Ji-li starts to
confront new ideas, such as the four which declares that there should not have Old
Customs, Old Culture, Old Habits, and Old Ideas. She starts to separate, from her friends, relationships
and also from her family. She discovers
that her family had a black reputation. She started to be bullied, lost friends;
people teased her because in the Cultural Revolution, people with black
reputations would be seriously punished.
Then, her life started to
crash. Her reputation of being good student was gone, her reputation on helping
others, started to be seen as something bad, her reputation of a normal family
was gone as a bullet. She almost,
changed her name because of everything she passed. Suddenly, her father was taken away; she
probably would never see him again. The
cultural revolution influenced the author to write A book about it, and
to show the world how see changed her behavior and how she saw the world. Having
challenged her to be bullied because of her family reputation, she lost her
family and reputation. When she tried to get her reputation back she always
would get a punch making it impossible to achieve her dreams of having a good
reputation again. I chose this picture to to demonstrate Ji-li
reputation. You need tons of good things to create a good reputation but when
something breaks you can`t get your reputation back.
Antonio, great post and very nice research and facts, however, I thikn that yuou should definitely consider citing more sources from the book as well as sources for your great research. I really liked how you explained a bit about her life, and how her life changed drastically. That was very great and all but if you add more backups to your post, I believe you can make it even better and more credible. Without the sources the reader may not be sure if he or she should trust a middle schooler over someone else. To make this question disappear, the citations would be the number one thing you should focus on. Overall, very nice facts and ideas. Great post!
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