Disconnect and Intellect

Disconnection due to the Cultural Revolution

Four Eyes’ glasses

• Four Eyes’ glasses portray the idea that he doesn’t fit in. He can’t re-educate as well as others, because without his fragile glasses he can’t see, and is set apart by his intelligence. His glasses are a symbol of comfort and courage as well, and shape how he sees the world. When he loses them, he has lost his ability to see and feels like he has lost his way of looking at the world. They also give him a feeling of superiority towards the villagers. Without his glasses, he’s no better than the rest of them; they symbolize his education and wealth. They set him apart from everyone else. Symbolizing that he is smart and from the city, they re-education started to break Four Eyes, just as the buffalo broke his glasses.

Quotes

• “That’s where my son is being reeducated. You may have met him. It seems he’s the only one up there who wears glasses” (84).
• “Without his spectacles his goggle eyes reminded me of the dull, dazed look of a Pekinese dog. He seemed quite lost and stricken, even before he had hoisted the hod of rice onto his back”(53).
• “He kept his bulging eye fixed on the ground before him but couldn’t see the raised stoned on which he might have put his feet. He advanced blindly, tottering and lurching like a drunkard . . . and he fell to his knees” (54).
• “He bent over and plunged his arms into the water, groping around in the mud. The blank expression in his bulging eyes was disconcerting”(47).
• “. . . Which sent his spectacles hurtling through the air . . . Clapping his hands over his eyes, he let out a stream of abuse, as if he had been blinded” (47).

Thesis

• Four Eyes’ glasses give him comfort and courage that depict his difference from the rest of the village, and his dependence on them shows his struggle to cling to the world outside of the mountain.

Books

Books let the narrator achieve things and give him courage to talk to Seamstress.

They allow him to realize that his ability to go and learn has been taken away from him by Mao and the Red Guards and makes him understand just how repressed his society is by the Cultural Revolution. Now that they books have shown him another way to live, he resents the people who keep him from doing so by banning literature.The books are helping him cling to the outside world and are one of the only things that reminds him of his life before it was destroyed by Mao. Literature is a large part of intellectual growth, and because the boys were not exposed to it, they feel like there was a gaping hole in their education. When introduced to books, they visibly grow as characters.

Quotes

• “‘This fellow Balzac is a wizard,’ he went on. ‘He touched the head of this mountain girl with an invisible finger, and she was transformed, carried away in a dream… She said having Balzac’s words next to her skin made her feel good, and also more intelligent.’” (62)
• “I took the novels out of the suitcase one by one, opened them, studied the portraits of the authors, and passed them on to Luo. Brushing them with the tips of my fingers made me feel as if my pale hands were in touch with human lives...‘So, are you weeping tears of joy?’ I said. ‘No. All I feel is loathing.’ ‘Me too. Loathing for everyone who kept these books from us.’

Thesis

• When the author Dai Sijie weaves the symbolism of books into the narrator’s journey, he portrays Balzac and the other forbidden forms literature to be life changing as they open a new opportunity for him to grow in an intellectual sense, that had been previously oppressed from the lack of opportunity.