Balzac And The Little Chinese Seamstress Summary

Dai Sijie’s novel, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress gives an elaborate analysis of the lives of children during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution in China. He paints the picture of the life of two young teenage boys, Ma and Luo, who are torn from their lives in the city and forced to live in the countryside to be re-educated with the typical proletariat. (Sijie). Sijie’s overall purpose in the novel is to convey to the reader how re-education in China was a cruel and unusual way to make the society equal as the proletariat and bourgeoisie are so polarized that they don't understand the ways of the other society. Sijie also shows his approval for Western culture to bring these two polarized societies together. He does this in introducing

Luo thinks the same way about the little seamstress and he wants to culture her with the western literature. The lifestyle of a very beautiful girl also changes Luo and Ma’s perspective on their time stuck in re-education. Being stuck in re-education with only other boys their age, a female presence to them is incredibly influential on their takeaway from this experience. Luo falls in love with the seamstress, taking her to a pond where they read together and act out scenes they have read in the books. (Sijie 143). The interesting thing about Luo reading her literature is that it begins to change her perspective on her life. Gradually the reader notices that the little seamstress is becoming someone who is not the mountain girl she used to

He accomplishes this through his personal experiences in the cultural revolution which are retold in Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. The diverging of two cultures that are totally different shock the reader as they are part of the same country which should be united; especially at a time so close to the modern 21st century. A love of literature is awakened in the protagonist which should thus reflect the author’s passion as well. The reader sees the many ways in which re-education shaped the lives of the young teenagers like Dai Sijie who were forced out of their city homes in the 1970s. While they were all forced to learn the ways of a very primitive culture with no progressive motive, some of these children found ways to connect themselves with modern western culture from authors such as Balzac. For the children in re-education fortunate enough to find this escape like Sijie, they brought home a love for something new that would then catapult China into a more modern, and economically advanced stage. Sijie uses a strategic autobiographical style in Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress to convey his own conclusions from re-education that shaped his love of western culture and his perspective on