Analysis Of Fan Shen's Gang Of One Memoirs Of A Red Guard

American’s First Amendment gives us many significant freedoms such as freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom to assembly, Communist China doesn’t have any of these freedoms if it goes against the People’s Government. In Fan Shen’s book, Gang of One Memoirs of a Red Guard, he had no rights to believe or say anything different from what the government wants. Shen is born and grows in a Chinese Communist family in Red China, and he tries to escape the legal way because if he doesn’t it would cause problems for his family. It is difficult to know what it is like not having freedom of speech when we have grown up with it, Shen was not as lucky, he grew up in a world without the basic freedom that is given to us in the First Amendment; …show more content…
Fan known two great loyal Red Guards Chunky and Dragon Sister, but they were arrested as traitors and Fan thought to himself that maybe the Great Leader was not as great as he thought, but he also known that it was a dangerous thought and hide it away in his heart (Fan Shen 41). He could have been in great trouble if he said his thoughts of the Great Leader out loud, even as a child, he could have been child as a traitor. At the beginning of the book there was a book burning to stop the flow of corrupt knowledge and to stop people from getting new ideas, the campaign said “THE NEW SOCIETY WILL BE BUILT ON THE ASHES OF THE OLD” (Fan Shen 4). When Fan worked at the East Wind Aircraft Factory he met a country school English teacher called Fountain Pen. Fountain Pen was killed because he wrote down his ideas of Marxist and Shen was arrested because he was his friend. Fountain Pen is a good example of limited to no freedom of speech, if this happen in America no one would care much and Fountain Pen nor Shen would be killed or arrest. Life in China during this time could not be easy for anyone with no protection for their freedom of speech; they could share their thoughts or information with