Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Red Scarf Girl, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Conformity vs. Loyalty
Class, Power, and Justice
The Power of Propaganda
Identity and Individualism
Hard Work and Success
Summary
Analysis
Although Dad and Mom would have let Ji-li skip school for a few days after the posting of the da-zi-bao, she comes down with a 10-day fever and must stay home anyway. It’s the first time in Ji-li’s life that she’s been happier missing school than attending it. Grandma and Song Po-po both try to cheer Ji-li up, and An Yi visits frequently. Ji-li cannot understand why anyone would write such hateful things about her, or what she might have done to deserve Yin Lan-lan’s and Du Hai’s anger. When the teachers return to the classrooms, their lessons now focus exclusively on Chairman Mao’s directives. And the students post so many da-zi-bao that the one about Ji-li becomes buried and forgotten.
Ji-li’s illness responds to and mirrors the chaos that has so rapidly consumed Chinese society. The things that were true just a few days earlier (Ji-li was a good student, Ji-li loved school, Ji-li was a Young Pioneer and a good revolutionary) are no longer true. She wonders why her classmates target her; the narrative suggests that her highly-ranked position in class makes her a visible—and thus natural—target for envy and anger. Similarly, Xi-wen’s visibility—in terms of her large house, her flashy personal style, and her complaints to the school about the students—made her an easy target.
Themes
In the final month before graduation, the students focus on getting their Red Successors unit up and running. The Red Guards—self-organized groups of high school and college student revolutionaries—have become increasingly important since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, and they’re allowed to travel around the country for free. Many of Ji-li’s classmates have never left Shanghai, and between the opportunity to travel and the respect Red Guards have, they almost all become desperate to join. But only high school and college students can enter the Red Guards. The Red Successors fills the gap for younger children. Successors will automatically become Guards when they’re old enough. Each class at Ji-li’s school will elect 10 Red Successors. Ji-li receives word from Teacher Gu about the elections, along with the hope that Ji-li will participate.
At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, Chairman Mao called on students to openly rebel and self-organize to subvert the official Party bureaucracy. This helped him take down his rivals within that bureaucracy. The Red Guards were the main umbrella under which the young revolutionaries acted. And while ideological purity no doubt motivated many, the students’ reaction to the perks of Red Guard membership—specifically the way in which Ji-li’s classmates seem to see it as a free way to travel the country—suggests that a variety of motives, some ideological and others self-serving, motivated people’s actions during the Cultural Revolution.
Themes
The day before the election, Ji-li watches a massive thunderstorm roll in. The pouring rain washes down the windows and the sides of the buildings and into the alleyways where it sweeps away dirt and trash. She imagines the water washing the da-zi-bao away from the walls of the schoolyard. She opens the window and sticks her head out, letting the rain wash away her humiliation and shame. By the next morning, the storm has passed. When Ji-li arrives at school, she sees that all the outside da-zi-bao have indeed been washed away. They’re gone from inside, too, replaced by bright, revolution- and Party-themed posters. When the Red Successor nomination process starts, Ji-li feigns disinterest, even though she wants to be selected. To her surprise, someone nominates her.
The thunderstorm is an ambivalent metaphor. On the one hand, Ji-li chooses to interpret it in the moment as washing her clean to make a fresh start. With the da-zi-bao criticizing her literally washed away, she feels that she can regain her peers’ respect and become a Red Successor. On the other, the suddenness and violence of the thunderstorm seem to mirror the Cultural Revolution itself—and because readers, unlike Ji-li, know that the turmoil will last for years, what she sees as a fresh start can be interpreted as a dire warning about the increasing turmoil to come.
Themes
Teacher Gu writes the nominees’ names on the board. Then Yin Lan-lan raises her hand and suggests that the class status of the candidates should be considered. The first nominee immediately stands up. He says his class status is office worker—before Liberation his father was an exploited apprentice, but now his father is a Party member. Then Ji-li stands and stumbles through her own biography. Her status is office worker. Her dad is an actor, not a Party member. Du Hai interrupts, demanding to know her father’s class status. She doesn't know. But Du Hai does, and with a malicious grin on his face, he tells the class that Ji-li’s grandfather was a landlord and that her father is a rightist. He knows all this from his mother, the Neighborhood Party Committee Secretary. Ji-li immediately runs out of the classroom and all the way home.
In a capitalist system, degrees of wealth and property ownership tend to distinguish different classes; in China under the leadership of Chairman Mao, classes were distinguished by other characteristics. Yet in both systems, class generally indicates the tier of society into which a person is born and the consequent social advantages or disadvantages they have. Thus, Ji-li’s father is landlord class because his father was a landlord, not because he himself is—or ever was—one. Du Hai also links class status with other nefarious crimes in the eyes of the Communist Party, like rightist thinking, suggesting that bad blood (class status) leads to criminality. And the way he weaponizes this knowledge to persecute Ji-li illustrates the vulnerability of those whose lives and thoughts didn’t perfectly conform to Party ideology, especially during the Cultural Revolution.
Themes
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When Ji-li arrives at home with tears streaming down her cheeks, she demands the truth from Grandma. But Grandma gives her evasive answers. The next day, Dad takes Ji-li, Ji-yong, and Ji-yun for a walk. They sit in the park, and Ji-li nervously fiddles with the ends of her red scarf as Dad explains their family history. Dad’s large family was once very wealthy, but by the time he was born, the money had been lost, and the family members had dispersed. The children’s grandfather was a businessman and a landlord, but he was not like the cruel caricatures painted by the Communist Party. And anyway, his class status shouldn’t matter; he died when Dad was a child, long before Ji-li and her siblings were born. Ji-li feels a little better. She hopes that in middle school, her good grades will make up for her bad class status.
The red scarf indicates Ji-li’s participation in the Young Pioneers, a Party organization designed to inculcate good communist values in the young. But it doesn’t protect her from persecution by her peers; as ideological purity becomes more and more important, only absolute conformity will prove her faithfulness. And unfortunately for Ji-li, absolute conformity will be hard to achieve with a family like hers. Dad seems to believe that people should be judged on their own merits, not the status of their ancestors—a view Ji-li shares. But the reaction of her class to Du Hai’s revelation suggests that others may disagree with them on this point.
Themes
Du Hai, Yin Lan-lan, and Yang Fan all become Red Successors. They very obviously enjoy bossing their classmates around. Ji-li pretends not to care. But one day, Yang Fan overhears Ji-li calling their classmate, Deng Yi-yi, by the derogatory nickname “Pauper.” When Yang Fan calls Ji-li out, Ji-li apologizes to Deng Yi-yi. But this isn’t good enough for Yang Fan. She criticizes Ji-li and says that her family privilege sets her apart. All the students call Yi-yi “Pauper,” but only Ji-li needs to “thoroughly remold her ideology” because of it, because only she has a landlord grandfather and a rightist father. When Ji-li asks what her long-dead grandfather has to do with her, Yang Fan accuses her of denying the existence of class struggle. Then, quoting Chairman Mao, she alleges that Ji-li’s grandfather’s classist thinking must have influenced her father and thus Ji-li herself.
In the old, merit-based system, Ji-li had a lot more clout than her academically underperforming classmates. But now that things like class status matter more, she finds herself on the receiving end of their persecution. This incident shows how the power the Cultural Revolution bestowed on formerly marginalized groups could lead to corruption and abuse; Du Hai himself called Yi-yi “Pauper” in an earlier chapter, yet he agrees that only Ji-li deserves correction. Yang Fan’s accusations explain to a certain extent the rationale behind inherited class status, but in a way that blatantly ignores the choices an individual person makes. What Ji-li does, in other words, matters less to people like Yang Fan that what class she belongs to.
Themes
As the class bell rings, Du Hai tells Ji-li that she must come talk to the Red Successors in the gym after school. Ji-li can barely concentrate on her lessons. She wonders how she transformed from model student to bad person so suddenly. In the gym after school, Du Hai, Yin Lan-lan, and Yang Fan take turns criticizing Ji-li and her family. Ji-li can hardly believe it. She remembers tutoring Yin Lan-lan in math and giving Yang Fan piggyback rides to and from school when she broke her leg three years earlier. Ji-li feels frustrated over the attacks on her family; she had no control over which family she was born into. She tries to show her revolutionary spirit in other ways, like washing her own clothes, and volunteering for heavy jobs during the class’s weekly collective labor.
The Red Successors subject Ji-li to an informal struggle meeting here, criticizing and shaming her because they can. Their focus on things that she cannot control, like her family, rather than the actions she herself takes, suggests that they want to hurt her more than reform her. Ji-li feels surprised and hurt not least because she showed Yin Lan-lan and Yang Fan kindness in the past. Their willingness to forget that and attack her now suggests the ways in which suddenly finding themselves empowered can make people cruel. It also highlights how the Cultural Revolution’s violence and intense pressure to conform broke the bonds of many relationships.
Themes
Yin Lan-lan becomes more and more angry. She warns Ji-li that Ji-li is no longer the chairman of the class—or anything else. She vows that she, Du Hai, and Yang Fan will not put up with any of Ji-li’s “landlord tricks.” Ji-li tries—and fails—to hold back tears. Her outburst so surprises the Red Successors that they relent and let her go home, warning her once more to think about her problems. Ji-li flees the gym, reminding herself that graduation is only a few weeks away. After that, she will never talk to any of them again. In the schoolyard, she sees a tiny, delicate wildflower. She strokes the flower’s petals, vowing in her heart to take care of it and protect it. She wishes someone would protect and take care of her.
Becoming a Red Successor reversed the hierarchy between Ji-li, the good student from a relatively wealthy family, and Yin Lan-lan, the poor student from a poor family. Lan-lan points to this reversal herself, suggesting that she has more personal than ideological reasons for criticizing Ji-li. When Ji-li abruptly bursts into tears, her reaction seems to shake her classmates into relenting, reminding readers that all four of them are just children. Still, the narrative casts Du Hai, Yang Fan, and Yin Lan-lan as representative of the kind of bullies the Cultural Revolution empowered. And this in turn suggests that the other persecutions described in the book will be founded on equally baseless and malicious claims.
Themes
