Little Chinese Seamstress

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie is a story about love, desire, and individual action. The novel is set during the Cultural Revolution, and follows the stories of two young boys that were sent to the mountains to be re-educated. On the mountains, they meet another boy who shows them his personal books, written by Western writers. This was the first time that the two boys were introduced to Western novels. They become obsessed with the Western ideas that they read about in the book and apply them to their own life. So truly, the boys become more educated by the novels instead of the Communist regime. In Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie, the books re-educate the narrator and introduce him to Western …show more content…
The books introduce the narrator to the feeling of desire, and more specifically, the desire to live. One book in particular, has a main character, Jean Christophe, who the narrator idolizes. When the narrator is crossing a narrow ridge he recalls the character when thinking to himself: “After all, how could I die now, without having known love or sex, without having taken free individual action against the whole world as he [Jean Christophe] had? I was filled with the desire to live.” (Dai 114). The protagonist becomes self aware of his own life as he relates it to the life of the book character’s. And in doing so, he becomes filled with the desire to experience life as the character has. He says that he couldn’t die now “without having know love or sex” which are common sentiments, learned from writers of the Western world, that he talked about in his quote listed in the paragraph above. The narrator is not ready to die without having experienced these things, especially after reading about them so much in his books. The narrator is aware that in his life, he has not experiences these things and starts to long for them. When describing his life, he recognizes that he was “so far removed from human desires” (124), referencing the desires he learned about from the …show more content…
The narrator is educated about independence Jean-Christophe. When describing him, the protagonist says “But Jean-Christophe, with his fierce individualism utterly untainted by malice, was a salutary revelation. Without him I would never had understood the splendor of taking free and independent action as an individual.” (110). The narrator literally says that the character taught him the greatness of taking independent action. Independent action is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “to not depend on anyone else before doing an act”. Not only does the narrator learn independence from the books, but he becomes more self aware and then initiates it into his life. This can be shown when the narrator tells stories to the tailor. This is independent action because it is something that the narrator decides to do on his own. To take independent action means to take a risk. This is just like Jean-Christophe who takes independent action and is “untainted by malice”. The narrator shows that he is also untainted because he chooses to go against the status quo and spread reactionary stories despite the risk. In fact, he calls it a “revelation”, which is defined by the Oxford English dictionary as “The disclosure or communication of knowledge, instructions, etc., by divine

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Balzac And The Little Chinese Seamstress Essay

Balzac And The Little Chinese Seamstress Summary