Character Analysis: Red Scarf Girl

Imagine being in the cultural revolution where your family means everything. Now imagine that you and your family are disrespected because of your history and your habits. Would you still respect and love them? Red Scarf Girl tells the story of a young girl named Ji-li and her experience growing up in China during the Cultural Revolution of 1966. During this time in Chinese history, Chairman Mao introduces a lot of new rules about how people should live.It's supposed to make everyone equal. Mao wants to make a fairer China, where everyone is equal under communism.To Ji-li, though, this means a lot of tough personal changes. Since her family is loaded with four olds and they get punished for it. Ji-li's memoir is definitely sad at times, but …show more content…
However, throughout the story Ji-li shows that she doesn’t really love her family and instead uses them to get respect and more authority/power

In the beginning, her family is a very respected, loved and treated well.
However, things start to change, her family starts getting disrespected, hated and treated poorly and it’s all thanks to communism. After that she starts to hate her family, doesn’t want to be with them and pretends she doesn’t know them. For example, in chapter 3 Writing Da-zi-bao her aunt Xi-Wen is called out for wearing makeup and claims to think she’s better than everyone else. During this confrontation, however, Ji-li bows her head down in shame of being related to her and pretends she doesn’t know anything because she doesn’t know her. She hides her face because she doesn’t want people to know she’s related to her otherwise she’ll lose the respect of others. Also, if you go back to where it all starts, chapter 1 The Liberation Army Dancer, Ji-li and three …show more content…
During the argument , however, Du Hai ends up pointing out that Ji-li's family has a housekeeper, which isn't part of the new ideas in China. Ji-li figures she should tell her mom about this before it causes any more problems. This shows that she doesn’t really love her family and instead uses them to get respect and more authority/power. Because as long as nothing else is said she still will be respected and have more authority/power. To further demonstrate, in chapter 4 The Red Successor, Teacher Gu announces that students have been chosen to be Red Successors. This means those who are selected will help out the Red Guards to make sure the revolution is happening on campus.Ji-li is nominated by her classmates to be a Red Successor. However, before she can do anything one of her classmates asks each of the candidates to declare their class status. This is because it is a big deal in a revolution that is trying to make everyone the same.At first, Ji-li doesn't really know what to say. When she tells everyone her dad is an actor. Du Hai, being the jerk he is, interrupts her and reports that her grandpa was a landlord. That’s no good for her because everyone thinks landlords are bad and against the revolution. The

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