In Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, the author, Dai Sijie, uses the symbolism of the narrator’s sheepskin coat and Balzac’s book in order to exemplify the effects of the restrictions of intellectual liberty on adolescents.
Balzac Book
“The magic of translation! The ponderousness of the two syllables as well as the belligerent, somewhat old-fashioned ring of the name were quite gone” (56).
This quote suggests the limitation of western influence in China and also illustrates an analogy to how the Cultural Revolution deprived Chinese people of refined culture and intellectual liberty. When the narrator is in awe at the “magic of translation,” he hints that translation of Balzac’s French name into Chinese drastically changes the sound and the feel of the name. When he follows up by saying that the “ponderousness” and the “old-fashioned ring” of the name were “quite gone,” he suggests that the Chinese translation strips away much of the essence of Balzac’s name. One can infer that Mao’s regime accomplishes something similar by censoring and altering intellectual materials such as literature, music, and art that comes from Western cultures. This drastic alteration alludes to the fact that the Cultural Revolution took over people’s lives and stripped them of their intellectual liberty through the teaching of revolutionary propaganda and the limitation of outside influence on Chinese thinking.
“Picture, if you will, a boy of nineteen, still slumbering in the limbo of adolescence, having heard nothing but revolutionary blather about patriotism, communism, ideology and propaganda all his life, falling headlong into a story of awakening desire, passion, impulsive action, love, of all the subjects had, until then, been hidden from me” (57).
The lack of intellectual liberty during the cultural revolution greatly affects the adolescent youth. As one of many victims of resettlement, these teens are sent to the mountains to have all signs of western development wiped from their knowledge. While under the rule of Mao, the entire community of China is responsible to surrendering anything bourgeois to Mao’s communist views. However, with the great impact of western influences in only first edition of Balzac’s literature, it can only be inferred that with more reading, Luo and the Narrator are bound to resist their re-education even more. Luo and the Narrator’s growing thirst for outside knowledge can only seem to lead them into mischievous activities, getting them in trouble with the headmaster of the village while they could possibly watch their chance of going home dissipate.
Narrator’s Sheepskin Coat
“‘When she’d finished reading she sat there quite still, open-mouthed. Your coat was resting on the flat of her hands, the way a sacred object lies in the palms of the pious’” (62).
This passage compares the sheepskin coat to a holy object. The author is suggesting that the words written on the coat are “holy” and carry a special weight to them. This shows the power of ideas and how the right ideas can sway people’s opinions dramatically. Despite their lifetimes of communist propaganda, Luo, the narrator, and the Little Seamstress are all quickly enraptured by the western ideas inside of Balzac’s book. This quote shows that despite bad odds, intellectual liberty will always be able to break through.
“‘She ended up putting your wretched coat on (which looked very good on her, I must say). She said having Balzac’s words next to her skin made her feel good, and also more intelligent’” (62).
This quote shows that the sheepskin is an important object that relates to intellectual liberty. The narrator writes his favorite quotes and passages on the coat in case that the never get their hands on the book again after returning to Four Eyes. This shows that they really embrace Western literature. They are awed by the power of words, and their imagination expands drastically. From reading the book, they learn more about the outside world. Even though their life is about communism, they are still captured by the words of Western literature. This shows that just by reading and being surrounded by words itself makes them feel more exposed to the outside world and more intelligent.
