Chapters 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 + epilogue
"I was no longer worried that she was a landlord's wife. She was my grandma." (pg 263, chapter 17)
To begin with, I chose this line in the book because I thought it had a great meaning. First, Ji-li mentions, and proves here, that she cares more about family than politics, unlike others that we saw in the book. This is important because Thin-face offered her to change her family status, but then she would have to condemn her father in his theater. Also, instead of giving Thin-face the letter that her mom had wrote, she tried hide it for the good of the family. In my opinion, being in her position would be quite tough because I would have to make such a hard decision: family and terrible mistreat or a good political status. All in all, this line describes explicitly Ji-li's point of view.
"We were all brainwashed", (pg 265, Epilogue)
Even though this phrase wasn't in the story itself, I thought that it was very strong and important to wrap up the story. To commence, this line clearly expresses what people felt after the Cultural Revolution, commanded by Chairman Mao. Hate, betrayal and dishonest are some of the words that I could think of that would describe this feeling of after the revolution in my point of view. Pushing this further, this line also shows how people were manipulated to follow a certain group, which in this case would be Chairman Mao and the Red Guards. In my point of view, people were manipulated more by fear than by the guards themselves. They were scared of what could happen to them next, or to their families. This is really connected to what happened a long time ago of how everyone was brainwashed by the church, and were forced to believe in their principals, as shown in the picture.
Image Source
I really like how you used that she was choosing family before the Communism, because of the first quote, she was showing that she loved her grandma very much and that she was disposed to do anything to protect her.
ReplyDeleteAlso in the second one you stated how they were all convinced that Mao was the good guy and he wasn't the one to blame for this whole epidemic". The people were brainwashed to think that he was the good guy and that he was only trying to help the revolution.