Post-Colonial Theory in 'By Night in Chile' and 'Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress' Anonymous College

Post-colonial theory divides the colonizer's point of view from that of the colonized; however, literature, with its promiscuous plurality of points of view can understand, contain, and even synthesize different cultural perspectives. Roberto Bolaño’s By Night in Chile describes members of Chile’s ruling elite under the Pinochet’s dictatorships. Dai Sijie’s Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress tells of two young bourgeois who are sent to the mountains during China’s Cultural Revolution to be reeducated. How the Chilean and Chinese characters view Western culture depends on the class. Generally, while the educated privileged Chilean and Chinese appreciate and embrace Western culture, peasants either distrust Western culture, as in Mao’s China or are ignorant and indifferent to it, as in Pinochet’s Chile. The novelists, unlike the characters in the novel, are given access to plural visions; only the novelists can see from all points of view: western and colonized, privileged and peasant. Indeed, both Bolaño and Dai explore the complex relationship between different classes by investigating the characters’ relationship with Western Culture. By Night in Chile describes the tormented life of Father Sebastian Urrutia Lacroix, a...