I believe

I Believe

I believe: that there's no need to replace friends, if we understand that over the years friends will be replaced.

I believe: that regardless of how pleasing your friend may be, they will cause you some sort of discomfort at some point or another, and it’s the way you react to that which makes you friends.

I believe: that genuine companionship maintains a steady progression even through the long hard fought years, similar to genuine love.

I believe: it takes a significant amount of time for someone to develop into the person they want to be.

I believe: either you have authority over your attitude or it has authority over you

I believe: that despite the initial flair and attraction a relationship contains at first, the adoration ultimately disappears and it’s essential that something else is there to take it’s place

I believe: that money is an awful way to keep score.

I believe: that adulthood has a great deal to do with the different experiences you encounter, and the messages you take away from them. Less to do with the number of birthdays you've celebrated.

I believe: that you don’t realize how much you need something until the minute you lose it.

I believe: that awards, certificates and superb grades do not constitute up to a honorable human being.

I believe: that when God closes one door he opens another.

I believe: that staying quiet and humble, gives God the opportunity to work wonders in your life.

I believe: that God put us on this earth for a reason, and we are to go out into the world and fulfill his purpose.  

Msimangu: Cry Character

Msimangu is a kind-hearted man who concerns himself with the needs and troubles of others. He is a priest in Johannesburg, and is finding that more people are leaving the church out of impatience, looking to solve their problems themselves rather than through God. Msimangu is not afraid to voice his opinions on the problems of South Africa and the new generation. He serves as an example of the old tribe of Priests, in contrast to the adapted generation of politicians like John Kumalo who believe that only by taking power themselves can they end the segregation of South Africa.

"I see only one hope for our country, and that is when white men and black men, desiring neither power nor money, but desiring only the good of their country, come together to work for it” (Paton 40).

“Sometimes it quietens one to smoke. But there should be another kind of quiet in a man, and then let him smoke to enjoy it. But in Johannesburg it is hard sometimes to find that kind of quiet” (24).

“Because the white man has power, we too want power, he said. But when a black man gets power, when he gets money, he is a great man if he is not corrupted”(39).

Shedding the Past

Thesis: Sijie uses the symbol of the narrator’s sheepskin coat to illustrate the connection the narrator feels to his former and life the significance of his friendship with Luo.

This connects to Coming of Age in that the narrator is coming to terms with Luo entering into a relationship and advancing past their friendship. He feels that he is losing his friend and his family, but is choosing to handle the change maturely.

Sheepskin Coat Represents:

• the boys’ friendship
• betrayal or hurt
• intellectual property being stolen?
• inner thoughts being used to benefit another?
• Luo’s disregard for the narrator’s possessions

• a connection to the narrator’s home
• making the mountain life his own journey
• staying connected to his past, or himself while on the mountain
• inspiration for what he wanted his life to be like again

• makes Little Seamstress feel more educated
• Luo’s struggle to civilize the Little Seamstress
• literature connected the Seamstress and Luo

1. “I copied out the chapter where Ursule somnambulates. I longed to be like her: to be able, while I lay asleep on my bed...I would visit, in my dreams, places I had never set eyes on before…”(58)

2. “He borrowed my sheepskin coat to wear when he went to meet the Little Seamstress at the foot of their gingko tree in the valley of love. After I had read the passage from Balzac to her word for word… she took your coat and reread the whole thing in silence… When she’d finished reading she sat there quite still, open-mouthed. This fellow Balzac is a wizard… He touched the head of this mountain girl with an invisible finger, and was transformed, carried away in a dream.”(62)

Thesis: Sijie uses the symbol of the buffalo to emphasize the significance of Four Eyes. Escaping from his re-education process, while giving up his morality in the process. This connects to Coming of Age in that Four Eyes has grown up from a boy into a man by really showing his literature skills.

Buffalo Represents:

• Four-Eyes’ re-education
• his struggle
• his revenge for the buffalo for breaking his glasses, like the re-education threatening his job?
• Cultural Revolution taking away his opportunities
• job blinded him to the value of the literature, like buffalo blinded him by breaking his glasses

1. “They’re waiting for the blood to congeal, … It’s a remedy against cowardice. To gain courage, you must swallow it when it’s still lukewarm and frothy… He (the headman) caressed the edge with the tips of his fingers and then sliced the pudding of thick blood in two: half for Four-Eyes, half for himself.” (94)

2. “For all his efforts to dodge the relentless lashes, one split second of inattention was enough for Four-Eyes to receive a blow to the face from the buffalo’s tail, which spent his spectacles hurtling through the air...He bent over and plunged his arms into the water, groping around in the mud. The blank expression in his bulging eyes was disconcerting.”(49)

How does our Past affect our Present?