Red Scarf Girl, by Ji-li Jiang
In chapter eight "A Search in Passing" of Red Scarf Girl, the Red Guards finally arrive at Ji-li's house and search for fourolds, this happened because a knife was found in her neighborhood's community bin along with half burned photos of her family (which they'd burned in the past day). The Red Guards identified Ji-li's fourth aunt in one of the pictures and connected them to the knife, thus bringing them to her house, which had a fair amount of fourolds such as the stamp book her grandmother had given her.
This event was similar to and reminded me of a scene during the movie "The Book Thief" when the nazis came to search Liesel's house to see if her family was hiding any jews. It was similar to the Red Guards searching Ji-li's house, not only because in both scenes searching was involved, but because in both cases they did have the things searched for and they were both in a time period in which their freedom was taken from them. Both Liesel and Ji-li also suffered from political events that hurt people, some of which, they knew (Ji-li's aunt and Liesel's best friend Limey).
This connection between these two titles made me realise that there was actually a lot in common between World War II and the Cultural Revolution, such as the fact that both included leaders of a country, during both events countless people died, both events happened around the same period of time and both events are ones in which many, many people cringe when they look back at them.
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ReplyDeleteGabi, I agree with what you are saying and the idea that in both situations people were having their freedom taken from them and they had no power, but I would like to point out a very drastic difference between both of them. As we could see when they raided the house and they found four olds, they didn't do much harm to them, they just threw it out or confiscated it. If the naxis found a jew in your house you would be probably executed along with the jews. Do you agree or disagree?
ReplyDeleteGabi, I thought it was very interesting that you connected the book we are reading to the book "The Book Thief." I watched the movie before and now that you mentioned it, I can totally connect to both books! Adding, other book I can connect with the "Red Scarf Girl" is "The Giver" and "Uglies." Firstly, the giver is a novel where this boy called Jonas is chosen to be the receiver of memory and he ends up discovering the really bad side of his community. For me, both books connect because Ji- Li is also seeing the bad part of things, but instead of her community, the cultural revolution. Second, "Uglies" is a book where Tally wants to do the surgery, that most people do, to look pretty. However, she gets in a big confusion and she ends up discovering the bad sides of the surgery. Again, this relates to our book for the same reason. Lastly, I really liked what you said in the last paragraph. I totally agree that there are a lot in common between World War II and the Cultural Revolution.
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