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Chapter 5: Graduation
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
Tensions in the city rise with the summer temperatures. Newspaper and radio stories constantly remind everyone about the need to root out the Four Olds, encouraging people to destroy any tainted personal possessions. Red Guards ransack the houses of “class enemies,” taking or destroying their prized possessions. The sound of drums and gongs announces a raid. And the sound keeps coming closer and closer to the Jiang apartment. One day, Ji-li goes with Ji-yun and one of Ji-yun’s friends to watch the raid of their neighbor, a widow named Mrs. Rong. Two Red Guard trucks, covered in banners condemning the Four Olds, block the entrance to her house. A da-zi-bao hangs on the gate, accusing Mrs. Rong of using the exploited labor of her former husband’s employees to fund her bourgeois lifestyle.
As the persecutions of Ji-li and others ramp up, the constant drone of newspaper and radio reports on the Four Olds campaign becomes alarming, rather than exciting. After her previous experiences of being corrected for not properly conforming, Ji-li feels more ambivalent when other people become targets; she now knows how little it takes for someone to declare another person a class enemy and thus a target. The gongs and drums the Red Guard use to announce their raids are political theater; encouraging witnesses increases the fear of those who may be targets and emboldens those who want to be join in as aggressors.
Themes
Ji-li understands that only searches like these can root out the Four Olds, but watching still makes her uncomfortable. Suddenly, Grandma appears at Ji-li’s side. She hustles Ji-li and Ji-yun home, ordering them to stay indoors for the rest of the day. All afternoon, Ji-li imagines the thrilling—and terrifying—scene at the Rong house. When Grandma asks her to run out and buy more soy sauce, Ji-li takes the chance to sneak past for another look. Neighbors gossip in the streets about Mrs. Rong’s expensive jewelry and imported dresses, her antiques collection, the amount of money in her bank account, and her mah-jongg habit. Suddenly, eight men appear in the doorway, struggling to remove a massive four-poster bed that looks just like Mom’s and Dad’s. Ji-li blushes at the realization that they have a “capitalist bed.”
Ji-li still believes in Party ideology, but the more she sees (and experiences) the Cultural Revolution’s human costs, the more uncomfortable she feels. She’s caught between condemning Mrs. Rong for her capitalist tendency to hoard wealth and the uncomfortable realization—which explains Grandma’s distress—that her family could very easily face similar raids. Clearly, in the context of Mrs. Rong’s belongings, the Red Guards use “capitalist” to mean “expensive.” But like “bourgeois,” “capitalist” is an imprecise and constantly shifting term. Without clear rules about who or what is good or bad, almost anything could become a target.
Themes
After six raids in the neighborhood, the sound of drums and gongs makes Ji-li more nervous than excited. Ji-yong still enjoys the raids, and he passes along gossip about them to the family. One night while he lists the contraband from the latest round—gold bars at one place, a gun at another—Song Po-po sourly notes that Mr. Ni, known in the neighborhood as “Six-Fingers” because he has an extra digit on his right hand, always has the energy to help with the raids even as he claims to be too sick to go to his job. As the raids continue, people become increasingly isolated, afraid to say or do anything that might cause trouble. Instead of summer fun like the pool and the movies, Ji-li and her siblings stick close to home. An Yi spends the summer with her grandparents, far away from the unrest in Shanghai.
Song Po-po implies that some people, including Six-Fingers, get involved in the Cultural Revolution to lash out against people they dislike or envy, rather than because they believe so strongly in socialism or justice. The narrative suggests that like Du Hai, Yang Fan, and Yin Lan-lan, Six-Fingers abuses his newfound power. As the raids continue, fear becomes its own instrument of control over the populace. No one wants to draw attention to themselves, and their fear drives wedges in the kinds of relationships that used to sustain the community. Slowly but surely, the Cultural Revolution tests the maxim from the prologue which says Chairman Mao should be dearer to a person than even their closest relatives.
Themes
Eventually, fearful of accusations that they exploit working people, Mom and Dad dismiss Song Po-po. Ji-li, excited that her family has stopped exploiting the older woman, can’t understand why Song Po-po seems so sad at the prospect. She isn’t like most housekeepers. She is literate and can read music. She loves to hum and sing folk songs. She only became a housekeeper after her husband’s death—he committed suicide after his business failed, and all their savings went to pay off his debts. After Mom and Dad dismiss Song Po-po, she still lives downstairs, but she no longer participates in family activities. And Ji-li no longer hears her singing even when she visits.
Ironically, firing Song Po-po is less respectful of her role in the family than keeping her on as a housekeeper. Elsewhere, Ji-li makes it clear that the arrangement is mutually beneficial rather than exploitative. And Po-po’s reluctance to leave hardly suggests that she feels abused. But the family must avoid anything that could be used to prove allegations of bourgeois attitudes. Po-po’s history highlights the difference between static class assignments and lived experience. Technically, she also belongs to a “black” class, since her husband was a capitalist, or businessman. But that doesn’t mean that her life has been full of bourgeois luxuries; in fact, she has endured both trauma and poverty. This in turn points to the way the Cultural Revolution’s weaponizing of class hierarchies creates injustice.
Themes
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In Song Po-po’s absence, Ji-li takes on more household responsibilities, eager to rid herself of any lingering bourgeois habits of mind. She volunteers for the hardest job: buying meat and vegetables at the market. At first, she feels overwhelmed. She doesn’t know how to assess the quality of meat or fish. Often when she gets to the front of the line, she discovers that the item she needs has sold out. Soon however, she soon masters the market, and she takes pride in getting everything on Grandma’s list despite rationing and shortages. She likes proving that she’s no longer one of the “pampered bourgeoise” when she leaves her home at 5:30 a.m. to do the shopping.
Despite mounting evidence to the contrary, Ji-li still believes that her actions matter more than her class status. Taking on the difficult chores both shows her loyalty to and love for her family and her own strong work ethic. And her success at the job just reinforces her belief that hard work brings success. That was true in school; she learns now that it’s true in life, and she expects it will be the same when it comes to revolutionary activities.
Themes
Then Grandma gets sick, and Ji-li takes over kitchen duties, too. One day, when Grandma seems particularly uncomfortable, Ji-yong offers to take her for acupuncture in the Neighborhood Party Committee’s shared pedicab. Too uncomfortable to wait for Mom to come home, Grandma accepts the offer. Ji-li and Ji-yun will help push the pedicab along while Ji-yong pedals and steers. They bring the pedicab back to their building and help Grandma into it. Then Ji-yong takes up his position at the pedals. With a great deal of difficulty, some danger, and at least one traffic jam, the children manage to bring Grandma to the clinic and home again. When Mom returns, Ji-yong boasts of their accomplishment and assures her they can take Grandma to the clinic themselves again in the future any time she needs.
Ji-li, Ji-yong, and Ji-yun demonstrate their revolutionary spirit as well as their familial loyalty and love when they take Grandma to the clinic. The journey presents steep challenges, which they face with courage and determination. This episode shows how working together can bring success, and how the children are stronger and capable of more together than they are individually. In the context of their family, they thus enact communist ideals, which encourage everyone to work together for the greater good. But now, the Cultural Revolution’s legalistic commitment to Party ideology does the opposite, fostering division and strife rather than cooperation.
Themes
Dad often comes home from the theater—or his many meetings—long after the children have gone to bed. Sometimes, though, Ji-li hears him come in and she eavesdrops on his and Mom’s hushed, late-night conversations. One night, Ji-li’s parents discuss painting Grandma’s red-and-gold trunks black, to keep them from being considered Four Olds. The trunks were a gift from Grandma’s mother when she came to Shanghai to marry Ji-li’s grandfather—a man whom she had never met. The trunks require two coats of paint. Ji-li and Ji-yun get bored before Dad finishes and go back downstairs, where they find the contents of the trunks—gorgeous, richly colored, embroidered articles of silk clothing—strewn around their room. Mom explains that everything belonged to family ancestors. Grandma carefully preserved these things even through the hardest, most impoverished years after her husband died.
The visibility of the Red Guard’s raids encourages people to begin to police themselves. Mom, Dad, and Grandma feel increasing pressure to look like they’re conforming to current social expectations. Letting Song Po-po go was one step in this direction. Painting and repurposing Grandma’s heirlooms is another. Like Song Po-po, although Grandma seems to have come from a privileged family, that doesn’t mean that her life was always easy. Moreover, she kept these things not because of their fineness or material value, but because they connect her to her ancestors. But in the current moment, such loyalty to one’s family (or the past) has become a liability.
Themes
Ji-li worries aloud that the clothes are Four Olds. Mom agrees—that’s why she and Grandma have decided to repurpose them into bedspreads. Grandma reminisces about the garments’ histories. Ji-li says her she shouldn’t feel bad about destroying Four Olds things. But as Grandma and Mom work, she and Ji-yun collect the gold sequins and pearls that fall from the clothes. Several hours later, a set of new, colorful bedspreads gives the room a festive air. Dad brings the trunks back in. Complimenting him on his work, Grandma says that the trunks should now escape the notice of the Red Guards if the family experiences a raid. Ji-yun looks up, worried. Cautiously, Mom tells the children that they might experience a raid, but that they shouldn’t worry about it. Ji-li can’t help but worry. All the new, bright colors seem to drain from the room’s fresh décor.
Communist propaganda has so thoroughly indoctrinated Ji-li that she feels well within her rights to criticize—albeit gently—Grandma for clinging to the kind of outdated beliefs and habits that impede the country’s progress. Yet, her open appreciation for the beautiful (and valuable) sequins, pearls, and silks betrays an inconsistency in her beliefs. She continues to believe that she and her family have done the right things to avoid scrutiny. The idea that they might be raided shocks her. She cannot yet see—or cannot yet fully accept—that what her family does in the present matters less than the wealth they had in the past. And as her shiny new bedspread and the newly blackened trunks proclaim, in the past the Jiangs were rich, the kind of people the Communist Party cast from power years earlier.
Themes
