Little Chinese Seamstress Character Analysis

Little Chinese Seamstress, written by Dai Sijie, is an instrument which remarks upon the re-education and revolution of China during the early 1960s. Dai’s commentary of the revolution is finite and expressed through circumstances of particular characters predominantly the narrator's. This commentary is intriguingly delicate in its attack towards communism which minimizes opinions in the novel. An exemplification of this is when Narrator is performing a tooth decay extraction on the headman. A hatred towards both communism and the headman is expressed, this emotion has been petrified throughout the novel and turns into a sadistic nature through the actions and thoughts of Narrator. The animosity he shows can be communism's indirect but strong influence on people’s emotions through suppression of freedoms and literature. …show more content…
Narrator sees the hypocrisy in the headman as he wonders why the headman would want the “humiliating” task of restraining himself. This is because he views the headman as a tyrant, someone who constrains and restricts others, but not someone who is constrained himself. Narrator’s feelings towards the headman can also be correlated into a similarity against communism and China’s suppression. Narrator describes an “awesome task” of “gripping the patient's head.” This starts to indicate the Narrator’s literal taste in helping the headman to receive pain. Even with his sarcasm throughout the passage his overall tone tells us he has animosity towards communism and the