To Live Movie Essay

The movie, To Live, starts out with the main protagonist named Fugui Xu gambling with Long’er. Fugui was addicted to gambling and eventually lost all his money and property to Long’er. Fugui was forced to give Long’er his family’s home in order to repay his gambling debt. Unfortunately, the lost of Fugui’s property and money made Fugui and his family become poor. In the midst of working with his puppet troupe to make money, Fugui was abruptly captured by the nationalist (Kuomingtang) army, and was forced to fight against the liberation army in the Civil War. The Chinese Civil War broke out as a fight between the communist and the Kuomingtang army. Chiang Kai Shek, the ruler of China at the time of the Civil War did not please the people as …show more content…
Mao used this weakness as his strength to win the Civil War. In the movie, Fugui was worried that he would never see his family again after being captured by the nationalist army to fight. It was then when Lao Quan, an old man that he met in the army, reminded him that he had to do anything to stay alive and return back to his family. When the nationalist army fled and left Fugui, Lao Quan and Chunsheng on the battlefield, Fuigui and Chunsheng saw the death of hundreds of soilders from the nationalist army. The liberation army had already attacked and killed the nationalist army. The hundreds of dead and wounded soldiers from the nationalist army were left untreated and uncared for to die in the snow. This shows the hardships and brutality that the soldiers experienced during the Civil War. Fugui and Chunsheng eventually surrendered to the liberation army and ended up playing the puppet show as entertainment for the soldiers of the liberation army. This was an important part of the movie because Fugui’s participation in the Civil War, serving under the liberation army, earned him a certificate that he would later use to protect his