Red Scarf Girl

8 grade

Antonio Fernandes

Post 4

What theme or themes does the author explore in the novel?  Which passages in the text connect to theme?

Have you ever thought how a political ruler affect the whole society? In the book Red Scarf Girl Ji-li he main character is in the middle of the Cultural Revolution that happened in China from 1966-1976. The main idea of this Cultural Revolution was taking out the four olds that stand for old cultures, old ideas, old costumes and old habits. The purpose of this Cultural Revolution was to attempt the reasserts of Mao`s the dictator belief. A dictator according to,(vocabulary.com) is someone that has absolute power or that  behaves as if is bossing everyone around. During this time, Ji-li family starts being persecuted.. JI-li can`t be a red successor because of her family’s reputation.  This society didn`t only affect Ji-li`s family but also the whole society she lived in.  Everyone in her society had to obey the leader no matter what.  This is exactly how a communism party looks like. A communism party is when the leader owns everything; it is a place in which only one person controls the political and economic system.  That affected Ji-li life and others around her. Because you could only believe in what the dictator Mao believed in. For example, Mao believed that the four olds were a bad thing so people started to agree with him and the society became chaos. An example is when the main character of this book, was in school and a boy got bullied for using pants that where considered “old” , meaning out of the standards of the new regime.. Some girls disrespected him by cutting his pants and shoes in the name of the political-ideal convictions.  Because of the theme cultural revolution, teachers taught kids military and political terms, so that they could participate in the Cultural Revolution. For example, in the chapter ten it says “In the first class Teacher Zhang had told us that in order to integrate all aspects of our study with the revolution and to prepare for war, we would learn military and political terms first…lay down your arms and we will spare your lives”. I think that this quote is very strong. When, I saw that the classes had everything to do with the revolution and that it says lay down your arms and we will spare your lives, I saw that all the classes changed from the beginning of the book because of the theme cultural revolution. In that time they were teaching kids how to make spare your life, they taught kids what Mao believed, their lives were like a prison. You had to believe in only what they demanded you to believe, you had to obey or get really bad punished “torture.” All of this because of the cultural revolution that happened, millions of people had to change their life’s completely to a worse one because of the cultural revolution.  This is how a leader and the theme affect the people.

                                                               

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/cultural_revolution.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/Mao.jpg