'Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress' Psychoanalytic-Marxist Analysis of Luo Elias Curran-Moore 11th Grade

In Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie, Luo’s attempt to re-educate the Little Seamstress is indicative of his own participation in the class struggle. This protagonist projects his own desire to be a member of the more sophisticated ‘upper-class’ in his education of the Little Seamstress. However, the end results of Luo's endeavors reveal the somewhat paradoxical approach to issues of class and agency that is central to the narrative

Luo is the son of a victim of China’s oppressive ruling class under Mao. A famous dentist who fixed the supposedly perfect Chairman Mao’s teeth, despite being upper-class in China’s pre-Mao era, Luo’s father was labeled as a reactionary and publicly humiliated “A great slab of cement hung round his neck from a wire so deeply embedded in the skin as to be visible...I could make out a dark stain on the ground...” (Sijie 9). forced to falsely confess to sleeping with a nurse as his crime. Luo is enraged that his father suffered this, becoming fixated on the fact the oppressive regime put his father down. This is made clear from Luo’s punching the narrator in the face after he tears up in sympathy for Luo’s father, causing an outburst of anger from Luo, the only time there was...