Red Scarf Girl Analysis

In the 1960’s, China was overrun by the idea that everybody must be equal, and those who are superior should be punished for their “wrongdoings”. Ji-li Jiang grew up in this unfortunate era, and her novel, Red Scarf Girl, describes the struggles that people in China faced every day of their lives during the Cultural Revolution. This unfair treatment of upper and middle class citizens is depicted by the author’s own memories of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Ji-li Jiang recounts childhood experiences in order to elucidate how her family’s political situation affected her education, her family’s financial stability, and her basic freedoms in life, providing readers with a deeper analysis and more personal communication of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. In her novel, Red Scarf Girl, Ji-li Jiang recounts situations in which her education was greatly affected by her family’s political status, which she was completely unable to control. In primary school, Ji-li Jiang’s peers did not accept her because of her class status. Jiang states that, “as a child from a black family - a black whelp - [she] did not feel comfortable”, around her classmates (167). Ji-li Jiang discusses the relief that she had felt when she realized that, “none of [her] former classmates were in [her] class”, at her new school, and therefore, “no one in [the] class knew about [her] class status [,and she] could make a new start and just be a person like everyone else” (158). The way that young children in 1960’s China were treated if their family’s class status as

By using her own memories and stories, Ji-li Jiang generates a sense of sympathy in the hearts of readers for a young, confused girl who was unwillingly tossed into the whirlpool of madness that was the Chinese Cultural