Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress Reading Question pg. 158-184

50. The seamstress tells the narrator that she is pregnant. The seamstress will not be able to find a doctor who can help an unmarried pregnant woman. Luo and the seamstress can not get married because they are under 25 yrs old. The narrator offers to go to the town hospital to seek help. The law prohibits people under 25 to get married and yet if they don't get married, the seamstress will never be able to have her baby. Also no doctor will be willing to help her.

51. The narrator thinks that his parents would be devastated and they would throw him out. It is a crime that transcends the Cultural Revolution because it is more of a moral question.

52. He wants to consult the preacher about seeking an abortion for the seamstress. The preacher stuck to his beliefs and continue to speak in Latin when he was dying. He did not say any of Chairman Mao's beliefs as reqeusted by his son.

53. The narrator promised to give the doctor a book by Balzac in exchange for performing an abortion.

54. The seamstress begin to dress more fashionably and modern looking. She cut her hair short. She begin to wear a pair of white tennis shoes. She made herself a brassiere. Luo thinks that her new look made the seamstress even more attractive. He thinks that he has been responsible for transforming the seamstress from a plain mountain to a city girl.

55. The narrator is upset that the seamstress did not even bother to tell him that she was leaving. He thought that they were good friends and he should have been told. He was upset too because he thinks that after what he did to help her when she was pregnant, he feels that she had forgotten about this.

56. The seamstress thinks that anything is worth giving up for her beauty. She is willing to do anything for her own improvement. The seamstress' re-education backfire because they lost her.

57. They were burning the books because the re-education offered by the books has brought them more suffering. It has backfired on them when the seamstress left. It is a purging for the boys because they want to get rid of the images of love and women.

58. The goals of the cultural revolution did not work because it did not stop them from discovering about the outside world. They did not become re-educated as the government wished but they were re-educated in another way when they begin to read western literature.

Notes on Sentence Clarity and Combining

• Purdue University
• Why do we need to be concerned with sentence clarity?
• To communicate effectively to the reader
• To make writing persuasive
• To show credibility and authority as a writer
• Common clarity problems
• Misplaced modifiers
• Dangling modifiers
• passive voice
• Misplaced Modifiers
• A word or phrase that causes confusion because it is located within a sentence so far away from the word(s) to which it refers
• Consider the differebnt meanings in the folowing sentences
• The dog under the tree bit Carrie vs. the dog bit Carrie under the tree
• Sometimes misplaced modifiers are used for comic effect
• How might you correct the following sentence?
• Jennifer called her adorable kitten opening the can of tuna and filled the food bowl
• Better: Opening the can of tuna, Jennifer called her adorable kitten and filled the food bowl
• How might you correct the following sentence?
• Portia rushed to the store loaded with cash to buy the birthday gift
• Better: Portia, loaded with cash, rushed to the sotre to but the birthday gift
• Misplaced Modifiers
• Some one-word modifiers often cyase confusion: almost, just, nearly, simply, even, hardly, merely, only
• Explain the meaning of the sentence
• John nearly earned 100$
• John earne nearly $100
• Dangling
• A word or phrase that modifies another word or phase that has not been stated cleart within the sentence
• Often occur at the begin. and ends of sentences
• often indicated by and -ing verb or a to + verb phrase
• Danglin can be replaced by
• placing the subject of the modification phrase as the subject of the indeendent cluase
• placing the subject of
• Passive Voic
• indicates what is receiving the action rather than explaining who is doing the action
• two indicators
• "to be" verbs - is, are, was were
• "by ___"
• Examples
• Mistakes were made
• The cats were brushed by Laura
• Sentence combining
• Why should we know about sentence combining?
• To build clarity, avoid wordiness, aoid redundancy
• Keys to sentence combining
• Create adjectives, create properly placed modifying cluases
• eliminate unnesssacav or repetitive phrases

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress Reading Questions pg. 131-184

p.131-157
46. Yes; I agree because he deliberately slowed down the process of drilling the teeth to make it more painful. He was satisfied while doing this.

47. The Old Miller: He realized how old is he, compared to how young Luo and the Seamstress are.
Luo: The Little Seamstress always dives to retrieve the keys, while Luo thinks that he'll never have use for the keys because he will never be released from re-education and never going home.
The Little Seamstress: She loves Luo and she is willing to do anything to please him. she discovered the experience of acting and she loves it.

48. The narrator thinks that he is a secret agent with a mission because he has to spy on the young men who also like the Seamstress. He pictures himself as the head of a routed army, charged with escorting the young wife of a friend, across the desert.

49. The narrator was a storyteller, laundry man, cook, and an all-around helper at home. The city youths were jealous of the narrator because they also like the Seamstress. After their attack, the narrator dreamt that he was tied to a tree and they cut off his ear. They fled when the seamstress came to save him from the gang.

Compare/Contrast to Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress Novel/Movie

In terms of the watching the movie and reading the novel, I thought that the movie was somewhat better than the novel itself. But both sources has similarities and differences.
The ending in both the novel and the movie was different.

In the book, the Little Seamstress leaves Phoenix Mountain and goes to the city. However, in the movie, Ma went back to the village because it was going to be flooded due to the construction of the dam. Ma hopes to find the Little Seamstress again, but unfortunately he didn't.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress Reading Questions pg. 109~130

39. The themes are love, women, and sex. These themes are all capturing the boy's attention. By reading the banned books, they can understand what the Little Seamstress is thinking about.


40. The theme of being free and taking independent action as a person captured the narrator because during the revolution, people were not allowed to think for themselves. They are all controlled by the government.

41. Luo trusted the narrator and the narrator took this assignment seriously. The red-beaked raven is a sign of bad omen.

42. The narrator's dream was also a sign of bad omen. He dreamt of the death of the Little Seamstress. It foresees the Luo and Seamstress will be separated.

43. The village headman asked Luo to fix his teeth. The cultural revolutions bans information and makes people ignorant.

44. The Little Seamstress' father decides to stay with Luo and the narrator because he heard from the Seamstress that they are excellent storytellers. And he wants to find more about Luo. The narrator told him a story of Count of Montre Cristo.

45. The village headman protested against the story because he thinks it is reactionary since it talks about somebody who is a Count. He wants the narrator to go with him to the Security Office. The narrator agrees to go with him and asks Luo to stay to watch over the things at home. In exchange for fixing his teeth, the village headman would let the narrator free.

Balzac and Little Chinese Seamstress - Key Themes, Events, Quotations, and Symbols

Luo and Ma: Basic Facts

• Luo is 18 and Ma is 17 when they first experience re-education
• They have only three years of lower middle school, but are considered intellectuals and therefore enemies of Mao.
• Luo's father is a famous dentist who once fixed Mao's teeth
• Luo's father is persecuted and imprisoned for admitting he once fixed Mao's teeth
• Ma's parents are both doctors
• Both Luo and Ma's parents are enemies of Mao (deemed reactionaries)
• Luo and Ma grew up together
• Luo and Ma's new home is a village on the mountain Phoenix of the Sky, a two day walk from civilization (any town)
• pg. 11 "The name.....profoundly solitary"
• pg. 11 quote: foreshadowing? symbolism? contrast?

Setting

• pg 12 "the pehoesxi...gloomy valleys"
• What do these words suggest about their new home? how would you describe the atmosphere?

Alarm Clock

• Luo's alarm clock fascinates the simple peasant who have never seen an alarm clock before
• Notice that the alarm clock has a rooster on it (another bird reference)
• The alarm clock allows Luo and Ma to manipulate the village headman by changing the time one hour ahead or behind in order to suit their desires
• Therefore, technology and education overpower and trick the ignorant peasants

The Little Seamstress

• She is deemed elegant and sophisticated in comparison to the rest of the villagers
• Her pale pink shoes are symbolic: classic and feminine
• pg 21 "In a place.....white nylon socks"
• pg 24 "When she laughed....of unpolished metal"
• She is wild and uncivilized, according to the boys
• She is full of great potential!
• "A steep valley divided her village from ours" pg 21
• She is separated from the boys by a very dangerous path - symbolic?
• Luo: "When she finished.....of the pious (62)

Tailor

• The tailor lives like a king
• He says he is well travelled but he has only travelled 200 km away! (ironic)
• His daughter has never seen the world

Malaria

• Luo gets malaria
• Malaria is an infectious disease caused by parasites such as mosquitoes, often found in tropical regions of the world
• The ignorant peasants try to beat the disease out of Luo by using sticks - where are the doctors?

The Power of Stories

• Luo and Ma are forced to re-tell films that the headman lets them leave the village to see
• "The whole audience wept, even the village headman, who, for all his harshness,couldn't hold back the tears pouring hotly from his left eye, marked as ever by three spots of blood"
• Red = communism!
• Ma: "Picture......hidden from me (57)
• Ma: "I did not...turned the last page" (57)
• Ma decides to copy a passage from Balzac's novel into his old, simple, sheepskin coat (symbolic of education and sophistication meeting ignorance and simplicity)
• Luo: "I could have read.....i'm quite sure" pg 61
• Literature and knowledge = refinement and sophistication
• Luo: "This fellow...intelligent." (62)

Four-Eyes

• Four-Eyes is a teenager
• His mother is a famous poet
• His mother gave him a suitcase full of banned books (literature from around the world)
• Classic Literature = Four Olds!

Four-Eyes' Glasses

• When his glasses are broken by the buffalo tail, it is very symbolic of how he is helpless without his education and how communism works to destroy education
• Glasses = education and intelligence
• No glasses - blindness (literal and metaphorical) and ignorance (lack of knowledge)
• Text-to-text connection: Lord of the Flies (Piggy's glasses break and the boys are doomed!)

Balzac

• A famous French writer of novels (in real life!)
• The book Luo and Ma read is Ursule Mirouet by balzac
• They are instantly fascinated by its romance and exotic location (France)

The Old Miller

• Miller = someone who grinds grains for a living
• The old miller is known for singing simple, peasant folk songs
• His filth, lice, and crumbling home =
• Four eyes wants Luo and aMa top copy down the miller's songs so that he can claim them as his own, and then leave re-e
• Luo and Ma pretenc to be Communist officials who have been given orders to collect his folk songs

Interesting Facts

• Notice it is the Seam stess' idea to steal the suitcase of books
• A buffalo is slautereded for the goig-away ritual that Four Eyes will undergo (this proves his "manhood" and readiness for leaving the village)

Predictions?

• Assuming the boys manage to steal the suitcase, how do you predict it will change all of their lives?
• What does this suitcase mean to Luo, Ma, and the Little Seamstress?

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress Reading Questions pg. 80~105

28. Yong Jing is a small town and it only had one street that was two hundred meters long. It had a post office, town hall, general store, library, and school. There was also a hotel that had a dozen rooms. At the end of the town, was a district hospital. the basketball court converts to an open-air cinema when they show the movies. Yong Jing had electricity instead of oil lamps.

29. Four-Eyes' mother was the woman who came to Phoenix Mountain to claim her son. The narrator tells the woman that he is Luo because Four-Eyes writes to his mother and suspects that the narrator is always asking about the suitcase. Four-Eyes' mother is positive that in the future after the Cultural Revolution, the intellectuals will be useful again in the society.

30. It was the seamstress' idea to steal the books. It is interesting because it shows that now, even the seamstress wants to know more about the books.

31. The buffalo was pushed off the mountain to make it look like an accident because the headman wants to kill the buffalo for the feast and it was illegal to slaughter working animals.

32. Re-education has not worked for Four-Eyes. He pretends to go along with the headman and drink the blood of the buffalo. But actually, he does not believe it that it will give him courage. It shows that Four-Eyes is cooperative but looking for an opportunity to help his parents.

33. The sorcerers at the feast were chanting and dancing while at Luo's bedside they were sleepy and did not do anything. I think they were just like performers in the feast and they were paid while the seamstress did not pay them so they did not do anything.

34. The narrator was so excited to find the books and he knows that the books offer more knowledge about human lives. He was angry that the government had denied these books because he wants to know more but these books are banned.

35. The boys want to take the books. But they are also worried that Four-Eyes will denounce them and they will be finished. If they take the books, Four-Eyes will report them to the authorities and the boys might be executed. If they take the books, the whole village will know that Four-Eyes had been hiding books and he won't be able to finish his re-education.

36. Luo wants to take the books to transform the Little Seamstress.

37. The boys are not justified in taking the books because it's considered stealing.

38.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress Reading Questions pg. 61~79

22. Four-Eye's mother had informed that an old friend of hers had been appointed editor-in-chief of a journal devoted to revolutionary literature. His mother wants him to work for the journal in order to get off he mountain. Four-Eyes has to collct folk songs from the peasants and submit it to the editor-in-chief. He fails because he did not collect any of the folk songs and the old man who lived on the Thousand-Metre-Cliff, would not be willing to sing.

23. They appear as though they are the soldiers of the revolution. They changed their appearance and wore clothes that was the exact copy of the revolutionary soldiers' and this works on the old miller.


24. Luo and the narrator seem very friendly and kind and asked if it would be okay for him to sing to them. While Four-Eyes demands him to sing so he would become nervous, Luo and the narrator change their appearance and appear as they are the revolutionary soldiers.

25. Four-Eye's mother wants him to find original, primitive words of ancient songs about emotion and love. The miller gave them local song about louse and a young nun, and a monk. The old miller's songs are nonsense and considered trash.

26. The forbidden increases their curiosity and excitement. The more they can't read it, the more they want to know about it. They are smart and aware of the actions and consequences.

27. The narrator fights Four-Eyes because Four-Eyes doesn't want to keep his promise to give them books in exchange for songs. The narrator is defending his privilege to read and he is justified because Four-Eyes did not keep his promise.