“The Flaw of the Stone: Baoyu’s Entanglement with Love how the Universe tries to Cure It” Carl Forsthoefel
On the very first page of The Dream of Red Chamber the author tells us of a stone which was cast away by the goddess Nuwa for being unworthy of repairing the sky. This stone is the ethereal representation of Baoyu, and is abandoned in a place called Greensickness Peak, located in the Incredible Crags of the Great Fable Mountains. Many people have studied the symbolic meaning of this peak and I read one in the first week of the semester that I feel is likely. In Chinese “Greensickness Peak” is called “qinggeng feng”, which is similar in sound to “qinggen”, “the root of love.” Thus when the stone is thrown to qinggen feng he symbolically thrown into the root of all human emotions. This is the Stone’s great flaw: his excessive attachment to love or beauty. There is no denying this fact; it is shown in many examples: the Stone’s dabbling with the Crimson Pearl Flower in his pre-incarnation life; his joy in sleeping in Qinshi’s bedroom, no matter how inappropriate it probably was; his intercourse with Ke-qing in his dream and then Aroma in the real world- all of these reveal that Baoyu is flawed with excessive carnal desires.
Even the Fairy Disenchantment rightly called Baoyu a boy with a “blind, defenseless love with which nature has filled your being,” suffering from “lust of the mind.” She is the stories’ first attempt at curing Baoyu of his over attachment. She plays a song titled “A Dream of the Red Chamber,” which traces the roots of all tragedies involving Baoyu, Daiyu, Baochai and other maidens. It is telling that the play’s first lines are “When first the world from chaos rose,/ tell me, how did love begin?/ The wind ...
... middle of paper ...
...n his dream. The descriptions of the patches of semen are another parallel in the two stories- the events are described to the reader using similar graphics. I think Jia Rui represents the consequences of extreme passion, while Baoyu is lucky enough to escape the dire consequences so far.
I think that further into the novel there will be more lessons directed towards Baoyu, and I’m also afraid that he will ignore all of them, which will be his downfall with the rest of the characters. By the end of Volume 1 Baoyu, Daiyu, and Baochai are moving into the gardens at Yuanchun’s request, and I think that being further from his responsibilities and superiors will only lead Baoyu down a more and more perilous path. However, this story is ultimately the description of the Stone’s enlightenment through passion, so maybe he will realize his error and correct his lifestyle.
In every story, there is a protagonist and an antagonist, good and evil, love and hatred, one the antithesis of the other. To preserve children’s innocence, literature usually emphasizes on the notion that love is insurmountable and that it is the most beautiful and powerful force the world knows of, yet Gen’s and Carmen’s love, ever glorious, never prevails. They each have dreams of a future together, “he takes Carmen’s hand and leads her out the gate at the end of the front walkway… together they… simply walk out into the capital city of the host country. Nobody knows to stop them. They are not famous and nobody cares. They go to an airport and find a flight back to Japan and they live there, together, happily and forever” in which their love is the only matter that holds significance (261). The china
different time of period and different region, but yet both stories shared similar endings and morals which receive enlightenment first hand. But they had different ways of delivery. their messages, and also their intention of writing their stories. Both stories concluded on powerfully emotional, although with different notes. Wu Cheng'en used third person view to give a general idea of each situation in the story, and yet Moliere used prosody techniques to control the words so that the sound of the play complements its expression of emotions and ideas.
and at the outset of the film escapes from a Xining labor camp to meet his wife, Feng Wanyu,
The Cultural Revolution in China was led by Mao Zedong, due to this Liang and many others faced overwhelming obstacles in many aspects of their life such as work, family and everyday encounters, if affected everyone’s families life and education, Liang lets us experience his everyday struggles during this era, where the government determined almost every aspect of life. The beginning of the book starts out with Liang’s typical life, which seems normal, he has a family which consists of three children, two older sisters and him the youngest, his two sister’s reside in Changsha 1. his father has an everyday occupation working as a journalist at a local newspaper. Things start to take a turn early in life for Liang Heng, his family politics were always questioned, the mistake made by one of his family members would impact his entire family and it would be something they would have to suffer through, it was impossible for them to live down such a sin.... ...
The movie the story of Qui Ju depicts the difficult quest of an ordinary provincial woman, who was seeking justice in the little village in China. Despite of the fact that she was pregnant, she persistently and willfully was overcoming all the obstacles on her path. She went from one office to other with a desire of restoring justice. However, she was disappointed again and again: officials were not able to fulfill her demands, even though the only thing she wanted was a mere apology by the village chief, who had severely beaten up her husband, Qinglai. The compensation she was offered with was monetary. However, she did not need money; she wanted an apology, but she could not get it because the chief was so obstinate that he would not apologize. No monetary compensation could retrieve the lost dignity of her husband and of hers, only a simple apology – an explanation could. The chief, being a superior, did not act in accordance with the philosophy of Confucius; his actions and behavior did measure up to the Confucian standards of benevolence and governance. This all caused a lot of troubles and to her and her family. This paper will try to prove it, scrutinizing his behavior closely following the plot of the movie.
... eventually realizes that there is absolutely no way to control whom you will love or when one will fall love. Xuela admits, “It is sad that unless you are born a god, your life from its beginning, is a mystery to you.” (Kincaid 202). The love that both Janie and Xuela feel, testifies to the incalculable and expected, nature of love.
...uch beauty, the maiden is chosen, married, and loved by the hero. This process leads not only to beauty by means of passivity, but also to security and happiness. Assertion equates not only with beauty, but ugliness and misfortune as well. Boys in turn develop a sense of responsibility and see themselves in the dominant role. In other words, they must save the day by getting the girl and then of course spreading wealth. For the young girls of the fairy tale audience to acknowledge that they must act out roles similar to the behavior of the heroines in the three tales under examination, thus guaranteeing eternal wealth and happiness. Boys will see the same roles played out and revert to the breadwinning hero role. Lessons portrayed throughout the story are epitomized by Marcia Lieberman to support the notion of love, success, and failure.
Hurston shows how love is imperfect with the imagery of nature in Janie’s experiences, throughout the novel. Janie starts the book with a fairy tail view on love, only to waste her entire life looking for it to realize that even the purest of love has its own problems. There is no such thing as a perfect relationship because there is no such thing as the perfect human. The Fairytale perfect idea of love gives young girls wrong ideas of how they should live their lives. This creates vivid gender roles of finding a husband and living through him, that girls feel they need to follow. The genre of cinderella is a fantasy, children should realize it is not truth.
Through the use of complementary colors, she achieves great contrast. Contrasting hues develop a theme of light vs. dark, or in Liu’s case, expectations vs. reality. Dark colors are used to suggest the harsh, chaotic conditions experienced by the workers; while light, less saturated colors illustrate the calm passivity of traditional Chinese customs and ideas. The sky surrounding the stylized women contrasts greatly with the surroundings of the exhausted men. The dark hues establish heavy visual weight below the figures and the light tones of the sky create a sensation of weightlessness and help to further distinguish the fantasy like qualities. Liu also includes the application of analogous colors, primarily to make the traditional figures less dramatic and to help unify the surrounding
Suyuan had a secret that she had kept from her daughter, Jing-Mei her entire life: two sisters that had been left behind while she fled from China. While it cannot be said that this was what caused her to have an aneurysm, the symbolism of having unfinished business, and ...
Long before Daoist and Confucian philosophy had crystallized in China, the view had become popular that two interacting, interdependent, complement forces–yin and yang–are present in reality (Young 120). Although all things emanate from the Dao, there are those elements that are contrary to each other, such as good and evil and life and death. The positive side is known as the “yang” and the negative side is the “yin.” These opposites can be expressed in the following manner:
Love plays a very significant role in this Shakespearian comedy, as it is the driving force of the play: Hermia and Lysander’s forbidden love and their choice to flee Athens is what sets the plot into motion. Love is also what drives many of the characters, and through readers’ perspectives, their actions may seem strange, even comical to us: from Helena pursuing Demetrius and risking her reputation, to fairy queen Titania falling in love with Bottom. However, all these things are done out of love. In conclusion, A Midsummer Night’s Dream displays the blindness of love and how it greatly contradicts with reason.
A very old Shakespeare’s play “A Midsummers Night Dream” believed to be written in 1590 and 1596 was a classical idea of fantasy. It portrays the journey of four young lovers and their interactions with fairies. They story takes place in a mythical city called Athens with an enchanted forest, where a fairy king misguides the star-crossed lovers and plays tricks on his fairy queen by transforming a poor actor into a half-donkey. This work focuses on human interactions with falling in love.
As the poem begins, Sexton starts with how the Prince and Cinderella are living happily ever after, but compromising the original naïve direction, she gives the poem a modern context bringing the reader back to reality. While it is obvious to the audience the discrepancies in Sexton’s version, it brings out many jealousies many of us struggle with, such as wealth and everlasting happiness. Sexton makes her audience notice early on many of the pre-conceived notions and expectations we bring to fairy tales. Sexton knows that real life gives no reason to be perceived as happiness, because why learn something that will never amount to use in reality? This tale is Sexton’s answer to her audiences of the “happ...
Fairy tales are meant to have a clear message for the younger readers comprehend and apply to their own development in the real world. These tales do not have a concrete setting for the reason of applying to multiple cultures and children. The numbers presented in fairy tales all can be interpreted in multiple ideas, all in relation to the reader 's personal beliefs. Without the precisely defined characters the message cannot be interpreted as wanted by the author leading to confusion and mixed messages. The intention of love at first sight lets the readers know that love is powerful and can dictate fate. Fairy tales impact cultures by giving a moral lesson and teaching children valuable life lessons. From all these years, stories are passed down to teach a lesson, and a specific type are fairy tales that embody aspects of royalty, love, hard work, and