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Chapter 14: The Class Education Exhibit
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Red Scarf Girl, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Conformity vs. Loyalty
Class, Power, and Justice
The Power of Propaganda
Identity and Individualism
Hard Work and Success
Summary
Analysis
One hot summer morning, Ji-li walks nervously to the school. Chang Hong wants to talk to her, and, because it’s “not convenient” to have the conversation at either of their homes, she’s called Ji-li to the school’s Red Guard Committee office. When Ji-li arrives, Hong offers her a glass of cool water. Red, revolutionary-themed posters cover the walls of the office. Hong asks Ji-li why she requested to do her summer labor in the Shanghai factories rather than the countryside. Ji-li answers that she wanted to stay close to home to help her family out. She explains that Mom continues to suffer vertigo attacks and Grandma’s arthritis gets worse all the time. Hong understands Ji-li’s desire to take care of her family. But she adds that the Jiangs’ bad class status makes Ji-li’s task of remolding herself harder and more important. Going to the countryside will show her revolutionary commitment.
Given her history with Du Hai, Thin-Face and others, Ji-li has reason to feel cautious when summoned to a secretive meeting with Hong; thus far, those associated most closely with the Revolution have not been very kind to her. But Hong continues to extend kindness and respect toward Ji-li, rather than repudiating her. At this moment, Ji-li and Hong are caught up in a massive rearrangement of Chinese young people. The Party had been sending urban youths to the countryside since the early 1960s, both to rebalance urban-rural populations and to expose urban youth to the lives of the agricultural laborers on which the country depended. But Mao increased these assignments beginning in 1968 (coinciding with Ji-li’s first year of junior high) to break up the revolutionary Red Guard committees. Although their efforts were crucial to the success of the Cultural Revolution, their fervor in many cases escaped his direct control and as they began to turn on each other, it created more chaos. Sending them to the country broke up the fighting.
Themes
Ji-li sees that Hong is nearly in tears. Ji-li appreciates Hong’s commitment to the revolution and the fact that she still cares what happens to Ji-li despite her black family. With conviction and sincere gratitude, she tells Hong that she will go to the countryside. In her heart, Ji-li doubts that she can actually rehabilitate herself to the standard of the Cultural Revolution without renouncing her family. Nevertheless, as she promised, she goes to the countryside to do her share of the labor that feeds the country. The urban students go to help with the “double rush,” when farmers simultaneously harvest the first crop and plant the second.
Hong’s tears suggest how fervently she believes in the Party and its decisions and although she doesn’t urge Ji-li to completely abandon her family, it’s clear that she feels family ties matter less than showing one’s revolutionary commitment. Ji-li agrees partly to avoid causing more trouble, partly out of gratitude for Hong’s kindness, and partly because she still holds out a sliver of hope that her hard work will pay off in the end.
Themes
The rice harvest is grueling, exhausting work. Each day, Ji-li must harvest five long rows of rice. Other students finish much faster than Ji-li; often she’s the last person in the fields. One day, near sunset, the sickle in her right hand slips, cutting deeply into her leg. She keeps working as the field grows dark. Then, she hears the swish, swish, swish of an approaching harvester. It’s Bai Shan. He wants to help Ji-li with her rows. Exhausted and overwhelmed, Ji-li bursts into tears. For a few seconds, she feels grateful. Then, she realizes that they will both get in trouble if anyone discovers that he helped her. She stands up with her sickle in her hand and insists on finishing her own work. With a look of confusion, sympathy, and disappointment, Shan leaves her alone.
Earlier in her life, Ji-li felt proud of how her efforts combined with the work of others to help her country prosper. The point of initiatives like collecting scrap metal and growing food in urban kitchens was that individual efforts contributed to the common good. Now, deep into the upheaval and chaos of the Cultural Revolution, Ji-li finds it dangerous to accept help from others. Ironically, in the name of upholding communist ideals, the Revolution has driven her to increasing isolation rather than greater cooperation.
Themes
Sometime later, after the students have moved from harvesting to threshing, Ji-li wakes up one morning feeling sick. Her head aches, her throat hurts, and she has a fever. But she knows she must face the challenge, remold herself, and succeed in her work. She struggles to her feet, swallows two painkillers, and trudges to the threshing machines. For hours, she stands at her machine, holding bundles of rice against its rotating drum. The sun beats down on her head as she fantasizes about popsicles, cool baths, and sitting in the shade. Eventually, her legs start trembling and her eyes lose focus. And though she desperately wills herself to stay upright, she faints.
Ji-li’s willingness to suffer through her illness shows how deeply she has internalized the messages she receives from the world around her. Struggle meetings, da-zi-bao, and other common forms of social and judicial punishment carry the message that those deemed insufficiently red deserve and should welcome physical and psychological suffering. She pushes herself to the brink to prove her worthiness to belong to a society that has already condemned her.
Themes
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After fainting, Ji-li has a nightmare in which she finds herself in a room full of ominous figures who move in perfect unison. She escapes temporarily only to find herself in a vast yellow desert. A large shadow looms over her, and she looks up to see an oversized version of Bai Shan, pointing and laughing. She jerks awake to find herself lying on a straw mat in the storeroom. After a few minutes, she drifts back to sleep. Later, she wakes again, this time to the sound of Chang Hong’s voice. Her classmate has come to the farm with a message: Ji-li must go back to Shanghai for more study sessions with Dad’s theater work group.
Ji-li’s nightmare captures the fear and paranoia she has lived with since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. Society and the Party push her—and everyone else—towards absolute conformity, represented by the identically-dressed, synchronized figures; those who fail to conform find themselves subject to torment, suffering, and social exile, symbolized by the desert. Because Ji-li deeply respects Bai Shan, his mockery in the dream hurts more than jeers from the anonymous crowd, pointing to the deep sense of personal betrayal she feels at the hands of a Party, which she has always believed in but that now seems to reject her. When she wakes up, Hong’s message confirms this sense of betrayal: Ji-li’s final attempt to prove her worthiness without repudiating her family has failed.
Themes
