Genre
Biography.
Setting and Context
China; 1960 - late 1970s
Narrator and Point of View
Anchee Min is the first-person narrator.
Tone and Mood
Passionate, perilous, insightful, and diagnostic.
Protagonist and Antagonist
Anchee Min-protagonist. Mao Zedong-antagonist.
Major Conflict
Anchee Min’s expedition of rising above the indoctrination of Mao ideals and philosophies.
Climax
Occurs at Red Fire Farm when Min’s homosexual affair enables her to grasp that Maoism is neither a supreme nor a rational philosophy.
Foreshadowing
N/A
Understatement
Mao’s ideals understate the hazards of ‘group think’; “To disobey Mao’s teaching is a crime.”
Allusions
The accounts of the Revolution are historical allusions.
Imagery
Maoism fortifies the subjugation of folks in labor camps and the sacrilege of central human rights.
Paradox
Min's parents' belief in Maoism, notwithstanding them being teachers, is paradoxical. Nonetheless, the paradox depicts the ubiquity of Mao’s wisdoms that they could even program accomplished teachers.
Parallelism
N/A
Metonymy and Synecdoche
Red represents communist philosophy.
Personification
‘Big Beard,' a bird, is personified: “She had to pronounce her mother’s pride.”
