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Chapter 7: The Propaganda Wall
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
Late one evening, Uncle Tian and Aunt Wu come to the apartment. Dad sends Ji-li, Ji-yun, and Ji-yong downstairs to their Fourth Aunt’s apartment until his guests leave. Then, he tells them that they must take Grandma—and a picnic lunch—to the park the following day. After they eat, Ji-yun and Ji-yong fall asleep on benches while Ji-li helps Grandma tidy up. Ji-li notices that Grandma looks pale and worried. Every time she hears drums and gongs, Grandma says, she worries that the Red Guards are coming to search their home. She worries about suffering pain and humiliation like Old Qian. Sitting at the park means she won’t be home if the Guards do stage a raid. Still, Grandma sighs, she can’t stay there all night—and she can’t spend all her days there, either. She knows she must get used to the way things are.
Thus far, while neighborhood raids and the fate of strangers going about their lives (the fashionable man accosted by the high schoolers, the ragpicker detained by Six-Fingers) have bothered Ji-li a little, she still mainly believes the Party line about the necessity of rooting out the Four Olds and reinforcing the authority of the Communist Party. But her parents’ hushed conversations with their friends and Grandma’s worry suggest that the Jiang family is more vulnerable than she realized. Grandma’s worry also strikes at the heart of what makes public humiliations such an effective weapon: these events terrorize potential victims and encourage potential aggressors, making both groups easier to manipulate and control.
Themes
Ji-li tucks a strand of Grandma’s hair back in place. As she does this, she thinks about how movies show landlords’ wives as “ugly, cruel, and stupid”—the exact opposite of Grandma. Ji-li remembers how Grandma has greeted her every day after school since kindergarten. She remembers being fascinated by Grandma’s petite, half-bound feet when she was small. She thinks about how everyone in the neighborhood has come to love and respect Grandma during the 30 years she has lived in their building. She knows that Grandma has never officially been classified as a landlord’s wife, and she tells herself that it will never happen.
Communist Party propaganda vilifies alleged enemies of socialism in popular culture as well as in the news media. It’s clear that Ji-li has absorbed these messages and that she believes them to a degree. Note that she doesn’t reject the stereotypes entirely; she just cannot reconcile them with what she knows of her grandmother. Her fears—and Grandma’s—suggest the power of propaganda and the pressure to conform. It doesn’t matter how well liked or respected Grandma is, if her classification gets changed and she becomes a class enemy, she’s likely to face the same persecution and public humiliation as others. And Du Hai’s knowledge of the Jiang family history suggests that such an event could happen at any time.
Themes
That evening, Mom comes home from work looking worried. The adults send the children outside to play immediately. When it gets dark, Ji-li and Ji-yun go back inside to the smell of smoke. Grandma explains that Mom heard a rumor that pictures of people in old-fashioned clothing are now considered Four Olds, so she and Dad are burning potentially incriminating family photographs in the bathroom. Ji-li finds an old picture of Dad as a little boy, sitting on a camel and laughing with glee while Grandma, wearing a fur coat, looks on. Mom tosses it in the fire—the camel and fur coat show wealth, and wealth is Four Olds. That night, Ji-li dreams about the building catching fire.
The Red Guards and other revolutionaries gain power by prosecuting those whom they charge with harboring any of the Four Olds or with crimes against socialist thought. But clearly, the rules change frequently. This keeps the powerful on top and keeps everyone else perpetually in a state of high alert that is itself a sort of torture. Without clear rules—without impartial justice, in other words—chaos and abuse run rampant. And encouraging people to burn family photos further weakens the ties of familial history at a time when the Party wants to position itself—and Mao—as all the family a good revolutionary will ever need.
Themes
By the third day, Ji-yong and Ji-yun have tired of the park, so they spend their days at Fourth Aunt’s apartment. Ji-li feels bored, too, but she wants to keep Grandma company. She sits on a bench, slowly savoring a pomegranate and watching the shifting shapes of the clouds while she thinks about the upheaval the Cultural Revolution has caused. Even the Chairman of the Nation, Liu Shao-qi, and the Party General Secretary, Deng Xiao-ping, have fallen under suspicion. Ji-li thinks about what it would be like to belong to a red family instead of a black one. And she tries to sort through her confused feelings. Of course, she hates her landlord grandfather and all of Chairman Mao’s enemies. But she felt pity for Old Qian, and she doesn’t know what she would do if Grandma was officially classified as a hated landlord’s wife.
As the Communist Party and its revolutionary masses aim to inculcate ever greater conformity among the population, Ji-li’s actions show that, at heart, she has stronger feelings of loyalty toward her family than anyone or anything else. Her willingness to endure discomfort to make Grandma feel better by keeping her company bodes well for any tests of her loyalty that may come. The shifting shape of the clouds metaphorically suggests the changing ideals and demands of the Cultural Revolution—and the fate of Liu and Deng proves that no one is safe. If even the highest and most celebrated Party members can find themselves declared black, then it seems that someone like Ji-li, with her checkered family past, has little hope.
Themes
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At the end of a week, nothing has happened. Ji-li waits anxiously, unsure of what to expect. Then, late one afternoon, a dirty and disheveled Ji-yong comes into the apartment. When he refused to trade crickets for his army cap, some neighborhood boys stole it, telling him that a “black whelp” didn’t deserve it. This cap is special: it’s a real Liberation Army cap that Ji-yong received as a gift from his friend Ming-ming’s father. Grandma counsels Ji-yong to forget about it—it’s not worth stirring up trouble. But he vows to get it back.
Just because the feared search doesn’t materialize doesn’t mean that the family isn’t a target for suspicion and persecution. The bullying of neighborhood children parallels the experiences Ji-li had at school with her classmates and suggests the degree to which revolutionary fervor penetrated all levels of society, down to young children. And again, this incident clarifies the extent to which those who have power by dint of being red can define ideological purity to their own satisfaction. Clearly, a Liberation Army veteran thought Ji-yong a sufficiently worthy recipient of the gifted cap at some point. But with no respect left for authorities other than Chairman Mao and themselves, neighborhood boys feel free to make their own judgements—and carry out their own punishments.
Themes
Everyone calls Ji-yong and his best friends, Xiao-cheng and Ming-ming “the three musketeers” because they’re always together. All three currently face allegations of family corruption. Xiao-cheng’s father had been District Superintendent, but now he’s under investigation for being a “capitalist follower.” Ming-ming’s father, the Liberation Army veteran, was the Party Secretary at Shanghai’s respected Institute of Political Science and Law. But now, he’s been accused of being a traitor and detained. When Ji-yong fails to come home in time for dinner the next day, Grandma and Ji-li become worried. Ji-li goes to Xiao-cheng’s and Ming-ming’s houses but can find none of the boys. Finally, at 8:30 p.m., a triumphant Ji-yong comes home with his cap—and a black eye. He’s proud of himself and feels certain that no one will push him around anymore.
Earlier, Ji-li thought about the ways that the Cultural Revolution changed power dynamics at the top of the Communist Party. No one, not even the highest and most powerful people (by implication, the most ideologically pure) escapes persecution. Despite their apparently impeccable Party credentials, Ming-ming’s father and Xiao-cheng’s father find themselves criticized and detained. The book doesn’t explain their crimes. One interpretation of this silence is that that the men’s enemies have taken the opportunity to remove them and seize power using trumped-up charges.
Themes
Early one morning, Song Po-po rushes upstairs with bad news. Someone found an illegal weapon—a knife—and an incompletely burned photograph of Fourth Aunt in the communal garbage bin. The searchers automatically associated the weapon and the pictures, and Six-Fingers reported Fourth Aunt to the Neighborhood Party Committee. After breakfast, Grandma, Ji-li, Ji-yong, and Ji-yun go to the park, where they sit on a bench in silent terror. Ji-li wonders if—or when—the Red Guards will come. At four o’clock, Grandma sends Ji-li to see if it’s safe to go home. The mop (the family’s secret sign) still sits on the balcony, and she hears no drums or gongs. Cautiously, the foursome returns to eat a tense and silent dinner with Mom and Dad.
An emphasis on class status—and especially on how the class of a person’s relations affects their position—means that charges against Fourth Aunt (Dad’s brother’s wife) have a higher likelihood of affecting the family than the earlier charges against Jiang Xi-wen (Dad’s cousin). Actions taken against her will test their family loyalty. The charges against Fourth Aunt also point to the slim evidence necessary to convict a person of counterrevolutionary crimes in the eyes of the powerful Dictatorship Group and its network of spies. Only proximity connects the knife and the picture, implying that members of the Dictatorship may have been waiting for—or manufactured—an excuse to search Fourth Aunt’s home. After all, her father-in-law, Dad’s father, is known to have been a landlord.
Themes
Just as Ji-li drifts into a fitful sleep, Red Guards start pounding on Fourth Aunt’s door downstairs. Ji-li and her family listen to the sounds of the raid taking place downstairs, not daring to move or make a sound. Eventually, Ji-li drifts off to sleep again, only to wake suddenly to the sound of Six-Fingers pounding on the door and announcing a “search in passing.” Dad opens the door. Six-Fingers stands there in an undershirt and dirty shorts, backed by a dozen teenaged Red Guards in full uniform. Their leader, a loud girl, demands to know the relationship between the upstairs and downstairs Jiangs. Six-Fingers says that Dad is Fourth Aunt’s brother-in-law, making him a close relative.
Earlier examples have suggested that those empowered by the Cultural Revolution change the rules to suit themselves; the idea of a search in passing corroborates this. Without a real reason—yet—to search the Jiangs’ house, Six-Fingers invents one. The narrative vilifies Six-Fingers as a bully, emphasizing his disheveled appearance in a way that suggests yet again that he—a poor laborer—uses the Cultural Revolution to carry out vendettas against those, like the Jiangs, who live a more comfortable life than he does.
Themes
Reminding Dad to expect “leniency for confession, severity for resistance,” the Red Guard leader tells him to hand over his weapons or face a search of the apartment. Dad protests that he has no weapons, so the Red Guards push through the doorway. They open every cupboard, chest, and drawer, strewing the contents carelessly on the floor, including Ji-li’s precious stamp album. Ji-li knows that stamp collecting is now considered bourgeois, but still, she tries to hide the album and save it from confiscation. Unfortunately, the Red Guard Leader catches her in the act. She casually flips through the album, labeling Ji-li a xenophile and noting that she has a surprising number of Four Olds for a little kid. Then, she has other Guards put Ji-li, Ji-yong, and Ji-yun in the bathroom so they don’t get in the way of the revolution.
Dad cannot hand over what he doesn’t have; it’s not clear whether Six-Fingers demands weapons knowing it will give him an excuse to search or because the search of Fourth Aunt’s house goes back to an illegal weapon. In either case, his actions strongly suggest that he would have found a way to enter the house regardless; he makes up the rules to support the choice he’s already made. The stamp album, like many of the other things targeted during the Four Olds campaign, is itself harmless. Like the fashionable man’s clothing, it seems to be dangerous only insofar as it allows Ji-li to express her individuality. Since the party demands absolute obedience and conformity, marks of individuality—from personal taste to achievements like good grades—suddenly become a liability.
Themes
When the raid ends, Ji-li’s home is a disaster. The possessions that escaped seizure lie on the floor in random piles. The stamp album is gone for good. Fourth Aunt’s apartment is worse—the Red Guards smashed every piece of the valuable porcelain dishes she had received as wedding gifts. The next day, as Ji-li helps clean the apartment, she discovers her sanitary belt (a device used to secure menstrual pads) under one of Dad’s shirts. She feels embarrassment—and rage. Isn’t home supposed to be private? she wonders. It would be okay to violate a landlord’s home and confiscate his things, but she is not a landlord. As she ruminates, An Yi comes in and silently starts helping with the cleanup. And in that moment, Ji-li really understands for the first time that she cannot change the fact that she—like An Yi—has a bad class status.
Of course, Ji-li remains her own unique self with or without her stamp album. But its loss offers an unavoidable reminder that the Communist Party values her absolute obedience and conformity rather than her individuality. The fact that she, a child born after the Communist Party came to power, receives the treatment she expects would be reserved for true class enemies, like actual landlords, confirms this. Although Six-Fingers ostensibly ordered the raids to search for weapons, the scale of the destruction and chaos suggests that chaos and destruction themselves were the point. He wanted to remind the Jiang family that he has more power than they do. Ji-li’s discovery of her sanitary belt drives this home: absolutely nothing remains safe or private during the Cultural Revolution.
Themes
