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Chapter 2: Destroy the Four Olds!
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
The Communist Party suspends all classes in May, charging that the schools turn children into revisionists, not good red socialists. Ji-li goes to the school buzzing with revolutionary fervor just like the rest of her classmates—until she discovers that the teachers have disappeared. Instead, the students must spend their time composing da-zi-bao (big posters) criticizing the educational system. Reading about the corrupt education system in the newspaper enraged her, but now she doesn’t know what to say. It’s hard to imagine that her caring, conscientious teachers are bad. Ji-li’s friends An Yi and Zhang Jie don’t know what to say, either. But Zhang Jie points out that others will think they have a counterrevolutionary attitude if they don’t say something—and they don’t want that. Ji-li and her friends go outside to read other da-zi-bao for ideas.
By asking the children to criticize their teachers, the Party seeks to test—and to reenforce through peer pressure—students’ loyalty to their ideology. Propaganda is naturally general and universal rather than specific. When the newspapers tell Ji-li that the whole educational system and all teachers have fallen prey to revisionist thinking, she easily accepts it. But when she must criticize her own teachers for their faults in this regard—when she must move turn from generalities to specifics—the newspapers’ grand pronouncements seem less convincing.
Themes
Many students crowd the playground. Du Hai points out the da-zi-bao of a classmate nicknamed Pauper (Deng Yi-yi). It has Principal Long’s name on it, upside down and x-ed out like a criminal. Pauper smiles proudly and explains how she copied the idea from her sister. The girls move on and look at more posters. As An Yi reads one aloud, Ji-li realizes with surprise that it just copies a newspaper article outright. Zhang Jie says it’s always okay to copy da-zi-bao. They find one written by another classmate, Yin Lan-lan, who complains that the revisionist education system oppresses working-class people like herself. She claims its bias prevented her from becoming a Young Pioneer or participating in choir. But Ji-li knows it was because she never participated in class. Another student denounces a teacher who gave them a bad grade for late homework.
The da-zi-bao posters illustrate various properties of propaganda. Propaganda leads to and reinforces conformity through repetition; it’s a sign that it’s working when Ji-li recognizes a newspaper article blatantly copied onto a da-zi-bao. And propaganda twists or directly replaces the facts to assert its own views of the world. Ji-li knows that Yin Lan-lan’s complaints fail to illustrate the full truth. But any other casual reader of her da-zi-bao might believe—and repeat—it, giving it power. The posters that criticize teachers directly for assigning bad grades and other alleged offenses show how the Communist Revolution’s upending of traditional hierarchies empowered people to illegitimately accuse anyone they disliked, disrespected, or who they believed had wronged them.
Themes
The more Ji-li reads, the more confused she becomes. She struggles to imagine that her teachers have intentionally tried to corrupt her and the other students. She remembers Du Hai calling her a teacher’s pet, and she wonders if she is one. But then she thinks of An Yi’s mother, Teacher Wei, and her own favorite teacher, Teacher Gu. She cannot imagine them as the villains portrayed in the newspaper. Although she dutifully considers each of teachers’ flaws, she cannot think of one that seems to hate the Party or oppose Chairman Mao. Finally, to fulfil her revolutionary duty, she copies a newspaper article, too.
In moving from universal, grand pronouncements about teachers or the education system to her specific experiences with her teachers, Ji-li experiences the strong disconnect between propaganda and real life. She isn’t yet ready to abandon her faith in the Party or Chairman Mao. But as in the earlier incident where she watched the public shaming of the fashionable man, she sees through the propaganda for a moment here. Increasingly, people make unjust and unfounded charges against others they don’t like. Unfortunately, propaganda thrives on repetition, and the narrative shows Ji-li participating unwittingly by copying a newspaper article herself.
Themes
Within days, the students have moved from writing and posting da-zi-bao around school to plastering them on the houses of nearby bourgeois people—one of whom is Dad’s cousin, Jiang Xi-wen. Ji-li agrees with condemnations of her stylish clothing and makeup, since she agrees with Chairman Mao that “inner beauty is much more valuable than outward appearance.” But the students’ real anger arises from an incident a few weeks earlier, when Xi-wen complained to the school about students climbing her wall and plucking mulberry leaves from her trees to feed their silkworms. With da-zi-bao and paste in hand, Du Hai and Yin Lan-lan lead the students toward her house. Ji-li hides at the back of the line, hoping to avoid her aunt’s notice.
Xi-wen falls afoul of the students’ interpretation of communist ideology in two ways: first, by complaining about students taking mulberry leaves from her yard, she lays sole claim to a natural resource, which the students feel should belong to the community. Second, they condemn her tendency to wear nice clothes and makeup—to adorn herself in ways that broadcast her wealth—as bourgeois. Ji-li agrees with the latter charge, quoting a saying of Chairman Mao as evidence. This again shows the power of propaganda to influence beliefs; Ji-li reflexively believes or agrees with everything Mao says just because he is Chairman Mao.
Themes
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Someone rings the doorbell. After a few moments, Jiang Xi-wen opens the door. She’s not wearing makeup, and she looks haggard and nervous as Du Hai leads his classmates in chants and slogans. Then Yin Lan-lan denounces Xi-wen as bourgeois, tells her to paste the da-zi-bao on her door, and forces her to read its charges against her aloud. Ji-li listens to her aunt’s broken voice as she stumbles through the hateful rhetoric. On the way back to school, as Ji-li tries to join in her classmates’ cheers and jokes about her humiliated aunt, they pass Grandpa Hong’s bookstall. Da-zi-bao seal its door, accusing the old man of “Propagating Feudal, Capitalistic, and Revisionist Ideals” and “Poisoning our Youth.” Ji-li knows she will not read her favorite stories again.
The students publicly criticize Xi-wen in ways that have become socially acceptable almost overnight since the start of the Cultural Revolution, but which were unthinkable before. The traditional hierarchies of age and experience no longer apply. The incident also shows the increasing pressure Ji-li experiences to conform. Earlier, she hid her ambivalence about Party directives by copying her anti-education da-zi-bao from the newspapers. Now she must pretend to enjoy her aunt’s humiliation. But the costs of this conformity come into focus for her—and readers—with the loss of Grandpa Hong’s bookstall and its beautiful, inspiring, and often decidedly bourgeois and foreign books.
Themes
One morning, An Yi drags Ji-li to the schoolyard. Someone has posted a da-zi-bao titled “Let’s Look at the Relationship Between Ke Cheng-li and His Favourite Student, Jiang Ji-li.” Ji-li panics, and she and An Yi run away. After a while, Ji-li sends An Yi home then goes back to read the whole poster. It complains that Teacher Ke only likes “rich” kids like Ji-li and alleges that he gives her the highest grades and lets her win math contests. The lies make Ji-li feel sick. She knows she has worked hard for her good grades, and she has tried to help struggling students like Yin Lan-lan, too. As Ji-li considers the poster’s angry words, An Yi returns to the schoolyard to comfort her friend. An Yi reveals that the students have made hateful da-zi-bao about her mother, Teacher Wei, too, calling her a monster and a class enemy.
The violence and repression of the Cultural Revolution has circled closer and closer to Ji-li, first coming for her teachers, then for her aunt, then for her best friend’s mom, and now for her in the form of a da-zi-bao. Although she never learns who composed it, it mirrors the teacher’s pet allegations Du Hai leveled at her earlier. The poster’s complaints point towards its author’s jealousy of Ji-li’s success, even though Ji-li has earned her grades through her own hard work. But the Cultural Revolution has licensed anyone who envies or dislikes another person to attack, so long as they can criticize their victim in socially acceptable terms.
Themes
