The Eternal Prisoner Under The Thunder Peak Propaganda Analysis

In the short story “The Eternal Prisoner under the Thunder Peak Pagoda” by Feng Menglong, there are several occurrences of natural and supernatural phenomenon. While natural events have a subtle effect and aid in setting the mood, supernatural events have a more obvious impact on the style of the text, and the supernatural events specifically in this text make it increasingly mysterious. Both of these types of events can be looked at specifically in relation to the White Lady and how she is involved. The natural happenings in this text often involve the weather, specifically poor weather. Rain is commonly used to foreshadow something terrible; dark and gloomy weather indicates something undesirable in the text. Because rain is naturally occurring, it seems as if it has not been manipulated by the author and is merely a coincidence, enhancing its ability to set the mood as melancholy. However, in ‘The Eternal Prisoner under the Thunder Peak Pagoda’ the rain is seen as a good thing, because, “Heaven has not failed to bring down the good rain the …show more content…
The readers are encouraged to continue reading if they want to gain answers, and they are kept interested in the text. When Hsü tells others of the White Lady and that she had stolen the silver they go to her house but her neighbors claim, “‘There has never been any white lady here’” (362). The audience is questioning the White Lady and who, or what, she is. This further counters the natural events because the White Lady only offers suffering to Hsü’s life, as he finds that his wife is not who he thought she was. Although Menglong made it seem that the rain was predicting positive events, the supernatural events directly disprove this by actually being negative events for all because of the White Lady, who represents the