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Summary of the red scarf girl
Red scarf girl summary
Summary of the red scarf girl
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In the book Red Scarf Girl Ji-Li's Grandmother Cao, is a role model for Ji-Li despite her family status. Ji-Li admires her grandmother’s intelligence for graduating from high school at a time where few girls went to school, and for becoming a respected vice principal and teacher. To Ji-Li her grandmother is a lovely, benevolent, clever, and well appreciated person who is valued by her community and family. Throughout the book, Grandma Cao exhibits her dependability by always being loyal to her family and being trustworthy to her friends. Although Grandma puts up a brave front in front of Ji-li, it is clear that her family status concerns her. To avoid the Red Guards Grandma Cao took her grandchildren with her to the park during the day,
so that Ji-Li and her siblings aren’t there to see the cruelty of the Red Guards. She is relentlessly anxious because she hears other people gossip about her family and criticize them due to their more “luxurious” lifestyle and their black status. During the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Grandma Cao managed to stay strong through the ups and downs of her family life, and proved to be a caring and faithful person not only to her family but to everyone around her.
Long story short, let me be honest and say that the longer essay stapled to the back of this one is the one I wrote first, because I read the instructions wrong. I thought I would attach that paper also and turn it in, since I took the time to write it, and finished it before realizing it was not what you were looking for. It does, however, relate to this paper, because in this paper I will (indirectly) give the reasons why I wanted to write that paper in the first place.
At first, Ji-li thought she was the luckiest girl in the world. She came from a very wealthy, loving, respected, and dependable family. In growing up in such was so was she too, “I was happy because I was able to excel and always expected to succeed. I was trusting, too. I never doubted what I was told…”(Jiang 1). The way Ji-li felt towards her family, proving that is the kind of family is everything Ji-li wanted. It is important for her, so then she can feel comfortable, then the family dynamics changed. Ji-li’s relationship has changed due to the Cultural Revolution, because when the change started to happen, she was okay. Ji-li then hated her family’s guts and background; near the end of the book. Ji-li feeling’s toward her family was unbreakable or even strengthened more than ever, and never went away. “… I would never do anything to hurt my family, and I would do everything I could do to take care of them. My family was too precious to forget, and too rare to replace.” ( Jiang 262-263). The importance that she will never abounded her family even in the most difficult times in her life. The reason the change occurred was Ji-li knew she could change her name, but she will always be a Jiang. She could also never leave the best thing in her life. Ji-li had other problems in her life as well, besides her family, there were her friends. Well
Two different stories, two different individuals, two different lives, but one thing is obvious in both stories, each situation is the same. Whether it is the hardships that one faced or the wealth that the other enjoyed, each grandmother was a victim. A victim to something many people are afraid to talk about. In both stories each grandmother goes through a form of disrespect, because of their race. Racism was an issue then to some it is still an issue now. To me these two different ladies are not different at all they are actually the same. They are both individuals that were placed in certain situations for certain reasons. Not everything in life will be filled with enjoymen...
In Ji-Li Jiang’s Red Scarf Girl, the story is set in Shanghai, China. In 1966, Ji-Li Jiang is a happy little girl of twelve years. She looks forward to a future working for Chairman Mao's New China and his Communist Party. However, her happy life is suddenly interrupted by the horrors of the Cultural Revolution, a movement led by Chairman Mao, to remove all parts of capitalism in Chinese society. Her family becomes the target of government persecution, since her parents and grandparents are labeled as ''Black'', which means that they are opposed to the (Red) Communist Party. Ji-Li and her family become outcasts of society as they live in fear of arrest. Ji-Li realizes that the Communist Party and Chairman Mao prevented China from improving
At the beginning of the story we are led to believe that the grandmother is morally superior to the other characters in the story, especially The Misfit. Who we are led to believe is an evil criminal, but in fact the rolls are reversed. The Grandmother sits lower on the moral ladder than The Misfit. She looks judgmentally on other people but never turns that look toward herself. She believes this until the end of the story right before she is killed. Even though The Misfit commits horrendous crimes, he still admits that he is not a good man.
Before her first words she is already considered a disappointment, “a girl child is Mo Yung- useless” (32). From the time she is born, her grandmother, “the old one” (choy), relentlessly tells her how the world will treat her as a girl. She explains to Jook-Liang, ‘“If you want a place in this world… ‘do not be born a girl child’”(31). She is cast aside before she is given a chance and is never given the same opportunities as her brothers. Instead she is forced to help take care of her little brother (insert quote). The excitement surrounding a baby is always extreme, and it doubles in Chinese culture when that baby is a boy. When her little brother is born, she is truly considered to be nothing in the family. “ I recalled how Sekky had received twice the number of jade and gold bracelets that I had got as a baby, and how everyone at the baby banquet toasted his arrival and how only the woman noticed me in my new dress, and then only for a few minutes to compare Poh Poh and step mother’s embroidery”(32). She is a ghost in her own family, and treated as nothing from the moment she is born. It is because of her gender that she is looked upon as a burden and never given the same opportunities as her brothers so that she may excel in life. Through the shadowed life of Jook Liang one can see how gender roles are enforced by cultural
The Death of Woman Wang, by Jonathan Spence is an educational historical novel of northeastern China during the seventeenth century. The author's focus was to enlighten a reader on the Chinese people, culture, and traditions. Spence's use of the provoking stories of the Chinese county T'an-ch'eng, in the province of Shantung, brings the reader directly into the course of Chinese history. The use of the sources available to Spence, such as the Local History of T'an-ch'eng, the scholar-official Huang Liu-hung's handbook and stories of the writer P'u Sung-Ling convey the reader directly into the lives of poor farmers, their workers and wives. The intriguing structure of The Death of Woman Wang consists on observing these people working on the land, their family structure, and their local conflicts.
The grandmother had the highest status of the family because she ordered and punished the four grandchildren and Mrs. Dollanger. The grandmother at that point was now of authority status to the grandfather because he was sick in his dying bed. This goes against the definition of sexism, stating that men are believed to be superior to women. The oldest sister Cathy begins to encounter a role conflict within herself. She takes on the role of a sister and she also depicts a mother, because she is the one that cares for her young sister and brother. Strangely, she takes on the role as the sexual partner of her brother, Chris, because they do not yet understand that this is wrong because of their entrapment from society. Mrs. Dollanger then receives a sanction when her father dies, which is to inherit her father's estate. This was her reward for her father thinking that she hadn't had children. Her sanction at the beginning of the novel was the punishment of marrying her half uncle by her father disinheriting her.
Red Queen is written with such passion, that it envelops the reader in the story, hung on each and every word. A beautiful tale of hardship, romance, and betrayal. Aveyard does an amazing job of making the reader feel as if they are right beside Mare Barrow on her journey, of becoming the Red Queen.
In the outstanding book Mao’s Last Dancer, it tells a life story about a peasant boy named Li Cunxin who’s fate is laid out for him being a labourer in the fields just like his whole family but his determination helps him to escape his destiny. Li was chosen to go to the Beijing Dance Academy to study ballet. He moved away from his home and family to pursue ballet and make his family proud. Li got the chance to go over to America to discover the Western World of ballet. Through hard work, perseverance and dedication, Li was able to escape from his so-called destiny.
Like every human, Grandma India sometimes focuses more on herself than others’ feelings and can be too harsh when reprimanding her grandchildren. An instance of the first flaw is on a Monday after school, when the family is playing Monopoly. “She didn’t look up. She was preoccupied with examining her next move on the board. We were already resigned to the fact that she would skunk us all once again. ‘Right, how so?’ she mumbled, not taking her attention off the game for even one instant” (Pattillo 136). In this quote, we see that Grandma India is too preoccupied with the game to pay attention to Melba’s telling of her school day. Now, normally she would care more about Melba’s experiences, but in this moment she is more caught up in playing a game that
On the contrary she is seen by the granddaughters as surprisingly “cool” (Meyer, 74) and accepting of their quirks. While the grandmother was “Confucian born and trained, and a Buddhist and all” (Meyer, 74), she seems to have dropped these strict ideals and somewhat accepted her granddaughters American culture. For example, at the beginning of the story, one of the granddaughters, Lea, was wearing a rather provocative outfit for a fancy party she was attending later, and while the grandmother told her that she looked like a “high class whore”, she then admits it was merely a teasing compliment, and on top of that, instructs her granddaughter to “do the cha-cha for [her]” since she “didn’t get to do much when [she] was young, with [her] clubbed foot and the wars and everything else” (Meyer, 73). Her Confucian ideals put utmost importance on how once carries themselves(1), and dressing like this would definitely create conflict. This is the first concrete example of the grandmother not only accepting her granddaughter’s different lifestyle, but also showing some envy, or at least understanding why it would be enjoyable. While a traditional Confucian upbringing would not allow anything close to this, the grandmother overrides this and starts to see the perks of enjoying
Lisa See’s 2005 novel, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, discusses the role money and class has in nineteenth Century China. The family dynamic is shattered due to the desire to achieve economic stability. Early in the novel, Lily seems to have a complicated relationship with her family because daughters were not valued during the nineteenth century. Lily describes her relationship with her mother as, “I was a third child, a second worthless girl, too little to waste time on until it looked like I would survive my milk years. She looked at me the way all mother looked at their daughters—as temporary mouth to feed and a body to dress until I went to my husband’s home. (See 12). Lily, however, displays affection for her family, frequently sitting
...ith Jing Mei and her mother, it is compounded by the fact that there are dual nationalities involved as well. Not only did the mother’s good intentions bring about failure and disappointment from Jing Mei, but rooted in her mother’s culture was the belief that children are to be obedient and give respect to their elders. "Only two kinds of daughters.....those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind!" (Tan1) is the comment made by her mother when Jing Mei refuses to continue with piano lessons. In the end, this story shows that not only is the mother-daughter relationship intricately complex but is made even more so with cultural and generational differences added to the mix.
Kingston uses the story of her aunt to show the gender roles in China. Women had to take and respect gender roles that they were given. Women roles they had to follow were getting married, obey men, be a mother, and provide food. Women had to get married. Kingston states, “When the family found a young man in the next village to be her husband…she would be the first wife, an advantage secure now” (623). This quote shows how women had to get married, which is a role women in China had to follow. Moreover, marriage is a very important step in women lives. The marriage of a couple in the village where Kingston’s aunt lived was very important because any thing an individual would do would affect the village and create social disorder. Men dominated women physically and mentally. In paragraph eighteen, “they both gav...