Balzac And The Little Chinese Seamstress Sparknotes

The Chinese Cultural Revolution in the mid 19th century brought a forced wave of reverting to traditional values, resulting in “approximately 12 million” (Allen “Dai”) people to be forced into villages. Because of the repetition aspect of history, many writers have written about concepts and ideas that people who are currently suffering will relate to. When writing about issues, authors tend to allude to other literature works. Relying on other authors to help explain characters’ desires or actions, authors include other works of literature to help strengthen their core concepts, beliefs, and overarching message. One author, Dai Sijie, wrote about his experiences during the Cultural Revolution in the novel Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, explaining how he attempted to survive by “showing off Western novelties...including an alarm clock, and a violin” (Allen “Balzac”). The novel begins with soldiers sending the two protagonists, Luo and the narrator, to a village, called Phoenix of the Sky (“Balzac”) in order to …show more content…
The correlation between the recent theft of the books and Rousseau is that he encourages actions resulting from self-interest. Moreover, he was included in the novel because of his views on individuality and self-preservation. Because Rousseau promoted actions based on elongating one’s life, Sijie found it important to allude to Rousseau. In addition, including his revolutionary and enlightened ideals negated Chairman Mao’s ideas about a group’s similarity. In such a society where even songs must be about one person (Sijie 5), one’s individuality is taken away by forcing them to be farmers. Rousseau’s views on a character’s distinctiveness and his societal views caused Dai Sijie to rely on his ideals to help convey his overarching message and explain the characters’