Aryan Raj
Mr. Reed
World Literature
4 December 2018
The Power of Books in Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
The novel Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie takes place in an isolated village on Phoenix Mountain after the communist revolution in China where two teenagers with middle school education are forced to go through re-education and learn the ways of the villagers. At the beginning, they have to carry buckets of manure on their backs and work in the field as part of their re-education, but they soon find forbidden books that truly re-educate the characters, especially the Narrator. As the Narrator reads the books, he becomes a more confident, independent person; and changes his perspective on life.
The books give the Narrator a way to believe in himself and become a confident person. When Luo and the Narrator come to village, Luo tells the chief that the Narrator can play the violin very well but he says, “‘Forgive me, comrade,’ I said embarrassed, ‘but I’m not that good’” (5). Even though the Narrator has been practicing for years and has almost mastered the instrument, he still tries to be humble. A confident person would be proud of what he knows and wouldn’t be embarrassed when asked, he would start playing with passion. While the Narrator knows his abilities, he still isn’t confident in them. You can see the Narrator get a little more confident as he tells the story of The Count of Monte Cristo to the Little Seamstress’ father. As he tells the story, he changes the tone, uses pauses, and stops at cliff hangers to engage him. “Every half-hour or so I would pause, usually at a cliff-hanger, not because I was tired but because I couldn’t resist showing off some tricks of the story-teller’s trade. I made him beg me to go on” (126). The Narrator learns how to tell a story by imitating the author’s work and telling the story in a way that portrays the author’s work. The Narrator also knows that he can keep the Seamstress’ father awake with his skill, giving him confidence. The book educated him by teaching him how to properly tell a story and engage your listener. Even Luo, who is a master at storytelling, is impressed and compliments him, “‘Right now,’ Luo whispered to me, ‘you’re doing better than me. You should have been a writer’” (125). The Narrator is better than Luo because talent only takes you so far and the Narrator actually studies how the author tells the story. In addition, when Luo finds out his mother is sick and leaves, the Narrator imagines himself as a secret agent whose mission is to protect the Seamstress from other men: “I pictured myself at the head of a routed army, charged with escorting the young wife of my bosom friend, the commander in chief, across a vast, bleak dessert” (148). The Narrator has read many books and learns from the characters to improve upon himself and become a confident man who can achieve his goals. He puts himself in the character's’ shoes and imagines what they would do in the situation. Without the reading the books, the Narrator would have been scared of protecting the seamstress because he wouldn’t know how to, but by imagining himself as “commander in chief” of an army, he is able to serve his promise. As the Narrator reads different books, not only does it make him more knowledgeable, but it also makes transforms him from a timid boy to a confident man.
Another effect the book has on the Narrator is on his perception of life. Before the Narrator read the books, he only knew communist ideas and hadn’t experienced or learned about love. An example of this is when he says, “Picture, if you will, a boy of nineteen, still slumbering in the limbo of adolescence, having heard nothing but revolutionary blather about patriotism, Communism, ideology and propaganda all his life, falling headlong into a story of awakening desire, passion, impulsive action, love, of all the subjects that had, until then, been hidden from me” (57). He feels that even though he is nineteen years old, he still hadn’t become an adult until he read the books. The books completed him as a person by teaching him about love, freedom and all things he was missing out on. The books he reads influences his life in a way that no other thing or person had done before, truly re-educating him. Another time his perspective of life is changed is when he learned the idea of owning something on his own, “For the first time in my life, I wanted something to be my very own rather than a possession I shared with Luo” (111). He grew up in a communist society meaning most property was shared by all, and the things he owned was shared among him and Luo. When he starts to read the foreign books, he understands the idea of owning property and develops the desire to own something himself. The books he read educated him about owning property, which was a new idea to him, and it gave him the desire to have something for himself for the first time.
Finally, the books re-educate the Narrator by making him more independent. In the beginning, the Narrator is very reliant on Luo. When he and Luo go to the Old Miller, the Narrator dressed up as a government official while Luo was the interpreter and dressed as an army officer. Even though was playing the role of a higher importance than Luo, Luo was the one actually talking to the Old Miller (68). This shows how Luo is a natural leader and the Narrator is just a follower. Luo was confidently speaking for the Narrator and improvising where he was stuck in an unpleasant situation, while the Narrator just spoke in broken Mandarin and let Luo take charge. When he starts to read the forbidden books, he starts to learn about the idea of independence. An example of this is when he read Jean-Christophe by Romain Rolland. He learned about being an independent person, “Without him I would never have understood the splendour of taking free and independent action as an individual. Up until this stolen encounter with Roman Rolland’s hero, my poor educated and re-educated brains had been incapable of grasping the notion of one man standing up against the whole world” (110). By reading this novel, he came to the realization that he can make his own decisions and not rely on other people. He became aware that if he hadn’t been re-educated about the idea of a person being independent and having different ideas, his brain wouldn’t be able to process it. Later on in the novel, he puts this idea of independence into use when he and Luo are fixing the headman’s tooth, “Suddenly, I felt the stirrings of an uncontrollably sadistic impulse, like a volcano about to erupt. I thought all about the miseries of re-education, and slowed down the pace of the treadle. Luo shot me a glance of complicity. I pedaled even more slowly, this time to punish him for threatening to take me into custody, It was as if the drill were about to break down” (134). The Narrator is angry at this point and recalls all this suffering he has experienced due to the headman. He remembers he has a choice and is independent enough to make his own decisions; he decides to slow down the drill and make the headman suffer. The books he has read, such as Jean-Christophe, re-educated him and taught him to make his own decisions based on what he thinks is right, even though it might be considered wrong to others.
Throughout the novel, you can see the Narrator develop his personality as he re-educated himself with the forbidden books. As he reads, he learns the importance of confidence and changes himself to become a more assertive man. He discovers new ideas of life and implements them into his own. He finally becomes an independent man, relying less on Luo and making his decisions based on his ideas.
Work Cited
Dai, Sijie. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. Translated by Ina Rilke, Anchor Books, 2002.