As Dai Sijie introduces the readers to the world of Luo and his best friend in Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, he paints the boys’ adventures in a vivid light using imagery, metaphors, similes, and other literary devices, while simultaneously addressing the issues of re-education during China’s Cultural Revolution through symbolism and the occasional change in the perspective from which the story is told. In order to enhance the story, Sijie uses metaphors and similes to help the readers see certain objects and events from the perspective of the narrator. By comparing light to “the eye of some nightmarish animal whose body had been swallowed up by the darkness” or the Headmaster’s teeth to “flakes of prehistoric basalt,” Sijie not only expresses the narrator’s anxiety and fear but also puts the living and health conditions brought on by the Cultural Revolution in perspective. …show more content…
By describing the narrator’s dream of the death of the seamstress and his fantasy of painting the seamstress’s nails in detail, the author emphasizes the narrator’s feelings for the Little Seamstress and characterizes them as significant. Throughout the novel, Dai Sijie sticks to writing in the first person point of view, however, after the consequential scene where the boys work on the headman’s teeth, he chooses to describe a scene from the perspective of the Old Miller, Luo, and the Little