Balzac And The Little Chinese Seamstress

Luo decides to undertake the project of educating the Little Seamstress by reading books by western authors to her in hopes that she will learn from the characters in the stories and try to adopt their civilized ways. The Little seamstress forms a connection with the books almost instantaneously from her first exposure to Western Literature. According to Luo, “after I had read the passage from Balzac to her word for word...she took your coat and reread the whole thing, in silence. When she’d finished reading, she sat there quite still, open-mouthed. Your coat was resting on the flat of her hands, the way a sacred object lies in the palms of the pious” (Sijie 62). The is astounded by the wise words of Balzac and it is and eye opening experience for her. Through Sieves diction in this passage, the word “pious” also indicated that reading books is also a sacred or spiritual experience for the Little Seamstress. This moment is one of the most significant in the whole text, because it makes the beginning of the Seamstress's Transformation, by showing the great effect that literature has on her. From the Little Seamstress’

First and foremost, Sijie displays storytelling as a means for entertainment, and in turn, as something good. He portrays Luo as an

The protagonist, Shinji, in The Sound of Waves can be contrasted to the protagonist, the narrator, in Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. Shinji found a girl, Hatsue, which he loved, and pursued to go after her even when it was forbidden by her father. On the other hand, the narrator loved the Little Seamstress, but didn’t go after her because his best friend, Luo, already had a growing relationship with her. Since Shinji was determined to win Hatsue’s heart, he went after her. This action of

In communist, Mao-ruled China, children were ripped from their families to be “reeducated” to have individual intellect snuffed out and made to better fit the mold of the ideal communist. Dai Sijie’s Balzac and the Little Seamstress tells the story of two boys subjected to this practice. A boy named Luo and an unnamed narrator who are put through the difficulties of being forced into another way of life. . In pages 142-144 the headman of the village the protagonists are staying in comes to arrest the narrator for telling forbidden western tales. To avoid this arrest the protagonists decided to help the headman with a tooth decay. While the narrator controls the speed of the makeshift drill, he starts to slow down the rotation speed to

Lou lost the Little Seamstress to individualism and her wanting to have free will. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress suggests that we as people evolve in our lives. We learn thing about ourselves and change our perspectives based off of our experiences. One of the major themes in this novel is that you cannot dominate people completely and try to force people to do things then you are in the place of power. The human imagination cannot be restricted and put into a box called communism. The Little Seamstress realized that Luo was trying to control her like the government authorities of China was trying to do to their people towards the end of the book when she says told Luo that “she had learnt one thing from Balzac: that a woman’s beauty is a treasure beyond price” (184). People are going to want to live as individuals freely and find a way to escape the rules. The topic of not being able to fully dominate and control people is a topic that is still relevant to today’s

Written by Dai Sijie, and published in English in 2001, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress is a contemporary piece with a classic story. The book is about a boy, known to us as “The Narrator,” and his friend Luo. It takes place in communist China. Luo is the son of a well known dentist, while the Narrator is the son of a lung specialist and a consultant in parasitic disease. Due to their parents’ education and status, the boys are sent to a mountain village to be re-educated. While there, the boys live in treacherous conditions and live life, similar to that of Sisyphus, but instead of a boulder, they carry sewage. The Narrator possesses the skill of playing the violin beautifully, while Luo was graced with a story telling ability. While being re-educated, they become acquaintances with The Little Seamstress, eventually becoming more. They begin to read her stories, which they steal, and begin to put their lives in danger. By then, it gets interesting. One major scene that showcases their actions is when Luo has to tend to his sick mother, pages 158 to 160, leaving the Narrator watching over the Little Seamstress. Within this passage, the Narrator’s usual tone drastically changes into a militaristic attitude which reveals that when he is put into a position of power, he conforms to the idea that he should be emotionless and straightforward, in order to hide his true desires.

The tailor finds another way to escape the controlling grip of Mao. On his customary tour of the villages before the New Year, the tailor decides to stay with Luo and the narrator while working in their village. The two are baffled upon the

Through the Seamstress’ time with Luo at the lake, she expresses her individuality therefore building on her character. Repetition of “you’re” such as “I know what you’re getting at…” shows the Seamstress’ ability to be brave and stand up for herself. She is aware that others make judgements of her vulnerability due to her strong loyalty to Luo, however she addresses the reader through these pronouns to uphold herself, exhibiting vitality. Her confrontation with the reader shows confidence and strength, characteristics she didn’t have when being cooped up inside her house. Through the selection of detail, the Seamstress claims she isn’t like the “French girls Balzac talks about” and describes herself as a “mountain girl”. Here, the Seamstress is acknowledging that she is different and unique. She separates herself from other girls with the descriptive word “mountain”, applying that she is more adventurous, bold, and courageous than the “French” girls.

Albeit all three of the boys are classified as having a “three in a thousand” chance of leaving Phoenix Mountain at the start of Sijie’s Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, the narrator and Luo are quite different from their cowardly, ungrateful, and propriety-driven counterpart, Four-Eyes, in that they are more bold, compassionate, and art-driven (Sijie 45). The narrator and Luo’s audacity is frequently exhibited throughout the novel such as when Luo deviously asserts that Mozart composed a sonata named “Mozart is thinking of Chairman Mao”; when the boys alter the time on Luo’s alarm clock so that they can sleep in and work less; when Luo and the narrator underhandedly steal Four-Eye’s suitcase to get their hands on some Western classics; and when the narrator sadistically slows down the treadle as an act of suppressed indignation against the inflexible headman and re-education in general, which prolongs the headman’s pain (Sijie 5).

Balzac and the Little Seamstress, written by Dai Sije, is a novel that demonstrates the human characteristic of finding light in the dark; finding hope in adversity. The book centers around 3 characters, all who grow as people with the influence of western literature. On pages 143-144, the Narrator, the nameless main character, controls a pedal that controls a needle, that he and his best friend Luo are using to fix their headmaster’s tooth, in return for Narrators freedom. Narrator grows into his lust for power through his experience with the village headman and his tooth extraction: at first we see his more apprehensive side when he’s given the power to cause harm, but all at once, when he understands he can finally get back for his reducation, he delves into his sadistic side, and fully embraces it, however, continuing to distance himself from reality.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress and The Alchemist have indistinguishable themes, but each author approaches them in very distinct manners. To serve these themes, both books use a couple of similar ideas. In both stories, the characters leave their comfort zones in order to embark on the adventure of their lives. In a literal sense, this is their setting. In The Alchemist, Santiago leaves Spain’s countryside and moves on to a larger city, and then the desert, in order to find his treasure. In Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, Luo and the narrator move from a populated city to a deserted, rural mountain to be re-educated. Here, both stories contrast given that in one, the character moves from a rural area to an urban one, while

The beauty of the Little Seamstress is first captured through her eyes that ‘had the gleam of uncut gems, of unpolished metal” (24). Sijie uses the gleam of her eyes as a symbol of purity for the Little Seamstress and shows an untainted aspect that attracts the boys to her. The Narrator proceeds to examine the Seamstress’s face that “possessed an impressive, sensual beauty”(25). She became a beacon of light whose beauty entranced Luo and the Narrator and “arouse in us [Luo and Narrator] an irresistible desire to stay” (25). However, even though she attains such beauty Luo persists that “she’s not civilised” enough to have fallen in love with her but he does “fancy her” (27). The limitations Luo puts on the Little Seamstress’s intellectual abilities leads him to focus more on her beauty as he sees it as her greatest strength and quality. The emphasis on imagery when describing the Little Seamstress complimented the concept of beauty presented throughout the

People are the sum of their different traits, but too often, we tend to define each other by one specific quality. Dai Sijie’s 2001 publication Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress demonstrates this in the form of two young men and how they consider their female companion. The Narrator and his friend Luo are being reeducated in a village in Communist China. Along the way, they both become captivated by the tailor’s daughter, the Seamstress. However, they only see her for her physical beauty, and for her potential to become “civilized”. By the novel’s end, the boys are forced to reassess their narrow views and come to recognize the Seamstress as her own multifaceted person.

In the beginning of the novel, Luo is performing as a high-caliber kind of individual towards his best friend, the Narrator. He is acting like he is superior over the Seamstress, saying things like, “She isn’t civilized, at least not enough for me” (29). Luo doesn’t believe that the Seamstress is that important of a figure, at least not considerable enough to be in his life at this point and time. All that he believes that she is to him is a little seamstress girl that he can read books to. Nothing more than that. The a Seamstress isn't as polite and courteous, as so he thinks. Despite his “uncivilized” feelings about her, he still reads books of reeducation to her and goes by her every chance he gets, which conveys that there is something there that he may be trying to hide, such as his underlying feelings for her. The Narrator noticed that Luo had been “following her every move”(29) and “taking his time to reply”(28). This specific action that Luo tried to hide wasn’t hidden enough for the Narrator to pick up on. Luo doesn’t want to admit that there may be some

     Kino overall symbolizes clearly good and innocent. Kino is thought of as 'a wise, primitive man' who is hungry for fortune because of the great pearl, which he discovers and later in the story he becomes 'an angry, frightened, but resolute man, determined to keep what he has earned'. He is a young diver who lives in a small village on the coastline of