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Chapter 8: A Search in Passing
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
In the fall, Ji-yong and Ji-yun return to school, but because so many of the junior high school teachers are out of the city establishing revolutionary ties, Ji-li remains at home. She feels bored and scared. She worries about Dad and Grandma. She also worries about An Yi and her mother, Teacher Wei. Teacher Wei was a highly respected teacher, but early in the Cultural Revolution, her students labeled her a black monster and a corrupter of the young. In addition, her father was a capitalist, and her mother—An Yi’s grandmother—died by suicide. Every day, Teacher Wei attends struggle meetings, in which the Red Guards at her school beat and publicly humiliate her.
Readers should remember that one of the opening salvos of the Cultural Revolution attacked the educational system as revisionist; one of the earliest revolutionary actions Ji-li and her peers participated in was writing da-zi-bao criticizing their teacher and schools. Those attacks against the establishment continue. Teacher Wei’s beliefs and actions don’t matter when weighed against her inherited class status and her position as a guilty-by-association revisionist. These alone qualify her for abusive struggle meetings. Earlier, Yang Fan told Ji-li that she needed to reform her ideology and suggested that public criticism would help her do this. But now it seems like it’s just a way for the Red Guards—Teacher Wei’s students—to assert their newfound authority and inflict suffering on someone who used to outrank them.
Themes
One day, Ji-li passes her aunt, Jiang Xi-wen, sweeping the street. With hollow cheeks and an unflattering, revolutionary hair style, she looks much older. Ji-li watches Xi-wen trip, fall, and struggle to get back up. Before Ji-li can help her aunt, she notices her cousin (and Xi-wen’s son) Shan-shan approaching. Assuming that he will help his mother, she waits. But he walks past without even looking at Xi-wen. Ji-li starts forward then stops, fearful of criticism for helping someone from one of the Five Black Categories. A neighbor passing by finally helps Xi-wen. And Ji-li suddenly remembers the da-zi-bao Shan-shan wrote, disowning his mother. At the time, she had admired his revolutionary spirit.
Like Teacher Wei, Xi-wen finds herself subject to ongoing, humiliating punishment with no end in sight. Ji-li’s reaction shows how effectively these public humiliations convey their message that safety lies only in conformity; she feels torn between her fear of becoming a target and her familial loyalty and respect for her elders. In contrast, Shan-shan has opted for self-preservation by publicly disowning his mother. While Ji-li appreciates that act in theory, her horrified reaction to its very real consequences shows that when put to the test, her deepest loyalties lie with her family, not the Party.
Themes
One cold day in December, Ji-li and An Yi return from a walk to find a crowd gathered in their street. An Yi turns away instantly, unwilling to witness one of Teacher Wei’s struggle meetings. But then, the girls realize that the crowd chants the name of Du Hai’s mother, Neighborhood Party Committee Secretary Sang Hong-zhen. Squirming into the crowd, they see her standing on a stool with torn shoes and a sign hanging from her neck. A skinny man, whom Ji-li recognizes as a former neighborhood resident named Xu A-san, accuses Sang of lying to him and convincing him to go to work for the Party in faraway Xinjiang, where he became crippled. When he wrote asking for her help to return home, she reported him to his boss and got him in trouble. But now, the Cultural Revolution has empowered him to stand up to her.
An Yi’s reaction confirms how struggle meetings and other public acts of humiliation and punishment effectively terrorize not just the victim but their families, too. The girls find, to their surprise, that Sang Hong-zhen has fallen from grace and stands accused of abusing young revolutionaries like Xu A-san. Her fate parallels that of Liu Shao-qi, Ming-ming’s father, and Xiao-cheng’s father, reminding Ji-li—and readers—that no one, not even people with formerly impeccable Party credentials, is safe from attack by the newly empowered revolutionary masses.
Themes
Ji-li never liked or trusted Xu A-san, but she understands the seriousness of his allegations. And she doesn’t like Sang Hong-zhen or her son, Du Hai, either. She can’t help but gloat a little. An Yi agrees—the wheel of fate has turned on Du Hai’s family and now they’re paying for the suffering they caused others. The idea of fate comforts Ji-li as a way to explain her current life. Fate caused her to be born into a black family. Fate makes her suffer now, but when it turns, she will be back on top again. But a few days later, Ji-li learns that other students are bullying Ji-yun and calling her a black whelp. Ji-li feels bad for all the times she treated Ji-yun like an underling rather than a beloved sister. And she wonders why Ji-yun’s fate seems to be getting worse, not better.
Not long ago, Ji-li and An Yi felt they understood the world: they believed that if they did well in school they would be rewarded and that they understood what it took to be a good revolutionary. Now, with everything plunged into chaos, they search desperately for anything that will help them understand this new, terrifying world. Their conclusions point to the gaps in their own thinking; for instance, Ji-li zealously points out others’ Four Olds superstitions but does not seem to recognize her own in this moment. One interpretation of this inconsistency is that it’s much harder to root out superstitions and to change people’s beliefs about the world than the Party wants to believe. Another is that the narrative wants to imply that superstitions have far less power to hold the country back than the Cultural Revolution’s lawless chaos.
Themes
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Chinese New Year and Ji-li’s 13th birthday pass with little celebration. One day in midwinter, she watches Ji-yong and Xiao-cheng chatting in the street. Xiao-cheng’s easy confidence, despite his family’s legal peril, impresses her. As she approaches the boys, a string of trucks drives down the street and stops directly in front of them. Xiao-cheng’s father stands in the first, wearing a dunce cap on his head and a sign around his neck that labels him a “Capitalist Executioner.” His hands are bound behind his back at a painful angle. The people in the trucks shout slogans for a moment, then the convoy moves on. Xiao-cheng breaks the stunned silence left in the trucks’ wake with and sarcastic comment, shocking Ji-li. She hurries home, hoping that his bitter words hide his real feelings of love and respect for his father.
Xiao-cheng’s father’s public humiliation points to the power of propaganda, and the assumption of the Red Guards and other revolutionaries that mere repetition of their allegations will make them true. The charge “Capitalist Executioner” fails to convey his crimes in its exaggeration (although the book doesn’t specify his crimes, it strongly implies that he's not guilty of executing anyone) and its imprecision—the “capitalist” beds of Mrs. Rong, Mom, and Dad earlier showed how the word has become a generic slur rather than a specific description of ideology or actions. And, although the book doesn’t clarify whether Xiao-cheng means his words sarcastically or not, Ji-li’s reaction in this moment confirms what the episode with Xi-wen and Shan-shan showed: her instinctive loyalties still lie with her family (and, more broadly, with the idea of family) than with the Party.
Themes
Ji-yong comes home to tell Ji-li that Ming-ming’s family just found out that Ming-ming’s father died by suicide. The Party cremated the body before Ming-ming’s mother could see it. The boys suspect that Party officials beat him to death instead. Then, Xiao-cheng and Ming-ming appear in the street below, and Ji-yong rushes off to join them. Ji-li goes to An Yi’s home with the news. But she finds An Yi in a desperate state of terror. The previous day, Red Guards forced Teacher Wei and others to climb the chimney of a nearby factory. An Yi tells Ji-li how she and her family worry every day, how they panic if Teacher Wei is just a few minutes late coming home from work.
The book creates doubt about the death of Ming-ming’s father, but neither option is good—either revolutionaries executed him without trial, or they drove him to take his own life in despair. He becomes yet another example of the many mostly innocent victims of the Cultural Revolution’s chaos, violence, and injustice. Teacher Wei’s drastic and dangerous punishment corroborates this, too. The revolutionaries at the heart of the movement control the narrative, however, and so both families must accept what they claim.
Themes
Ji-li thinks about fate, about An Yi’s grandmother, about her choice to die by suicide. She thinks about Old Qian collapsing from heat exhaustion, about Xiao-cheng’s father on the truck, and about Ming-ming’s father dangling from a noose. She asks if An Yi blames her mother for getting herself associated with the Five Black Categories. An Yi says, no, not really. Ji-li exclaims that she hates her grandfather, because her life would be so much better if he hadn’t been a landlord. But she knows she must accept her fate. An Yi agrees, wondering why their fate hasn’t improved. Even though they know such superstition is Four Olds, Ji-li and An Yi do a ritual to find out whether the future holds good luck, bad luck, or a mix of both. Fate tells them to expect a mix.
Ji-li wants to blame fate for the painful things happening around her, but the book has already laid blame for them at the feet of revolutionaries and the Cultural Revolution itself. In one way, this reflects the greater experience and knowledge of the adult Ji-li who wrote the memoir. But it also suggests a growing sense of doubt at the time, even if young Ji-li can’t fully articulate it. As she watches the Cultural Revolution unfold, her faith in the Party gradually erodes. And, perhaps, the narrative suggests, that’s why she and An Yi engage in their ritual now. As it becomes increasingly clear that neither Ji-li nor anyone else can ensure their safety if someone decides to target them, the risks of engaging in illicit activities shrink.
Themes
