hey you Essay

Submitted By joeisgay1234
Words: 672
Pages: 3

Kees Grondstra

Educated defined as middle school education, basic math, basic literacy. This is the highest form of education in pre-cultural revolution China. The Chinese Cultural Revolution was implemented by Chairman Mao was enforced to create a smaller gap between social classes. This sent the upper class, educated, landlords and other of power to the fields and hillside to be “re-educated” by the peasants and learn hard labor. The character Four-Eyes, eighteen years old, a son of two educated parents, a writer and a poet. Like his parents, Four-Eyes also knew literature very well. He owned many books that he kept stashed away from his friends and loved ones. Four-Eyes leaves the mountain to work a job that publishes folk songs. Over the course of the novel the character Four-Eyes came of age by learning the lesson of no longer living in fear.

The Four-eyes that is introduced in the novel is one of passive and quiet action Four-eyes was not out going he was more reserved than most characters however, he quickly changes into a character who voices his opinion. When Four-Eyes is first introduced he is portrayed as quiet and shy, “…but Four-Eyes, who was eighteen years old at the time, lived in almost perpetual fear,”(45). Going to a new place, without his parents and doing hard manual labor for a weak scrawny kid; the idea of re-education would have scared this submissive character in the beginning of the novel. Four-Eyes being eighteen years old has not left his parents side much, still living within his village before being taken to the hillside for re-education in physical labor. While he was working in the fields with a buffalo during his re-education his glasses get knocked off by the beast’s tail. Shortly after he loses his glasses, “He bent over and plunged his arms into the water, groping around in the mud.”(47) He goes and jumps straight into the water to find his glasses despite the very large buffalo wailing and failing near his head. You need to establish how he was very afraid of the water and that the Seamstress had to coerce him into going in.. .He over comes fear and dives right in to retrieve his glasses that are imperative to his sight. This shows that the character of Four-Eyes with just the sight of a girl changes his personality to become more masculine. How does this show a change in his personality? Why is it significant to understand? Four-Eyes along with the other characters in the novel were sent to