Nanjing Requiem Summary

The Literary Analysis begins in 1937 with the Second Sino-Japanese War (Nanjing Requiem). The Second Sino-Japanese War is considered to be the largest war Asian war that took place in the twentieth-century between the Republic of China and Empire of Japan (Second Sino-Japanese War). The story of Anling Gao and Minnie Vautrin was in fact real and true. Their story has been shared through Jin’s novel Nanjing Requiem, and Minnie’s own diaries which were published after her death. During the time of the Second Sino-Japanese War China was destroyed and ripped apart as the Japanese committed thousands of murders throughout southern China. According to World History: The Modern Era, the war began with the Marco Polo Bridge Incident where shots were

A man by the name of Li Dazhao began the communist take over through his students at Beijing University. The reference article published by World History: The Modern Era, described his finding of communism because, “He had read some Marxist texts during his studies in Japan, but it was only after he had formed a Marxist study group at Beijing University that Li came to a full appreciation of the complexity of Marxist thought.” Communism is a political and economic system of censorship and the sharing one’s wages with the entire nation. This can be seen as a wonderful utopian society however many critics and are against it as Jin himself describes the communism that changed his homeland forever. Linearly after Communism came two incidents for China, the Korean War and the Cultural Revolution as described by World History: The Modern Era. The Korean War is the basis of Jin’s novel, War Trash. Micheal Hickey of BBC news did an intensive research analysis of the Korean War between the two sides divided by the 38th Parallel. This Parallel was the imaginary line that divided Communism and Capitalism. These two Koreas each had aid from outside sources and China ended up being the aid to North Korea in hopes of spreading Communism to the South. The war would end with a concrete division between the Korean peninsula which still has military problems