Son of the Revolution Essay

Peter Kim HIST 354 McKenzie April 2013 Son of the Revolution Essay Right at the start of the memoir, Son of the Revolution, the indorsers attention is drawn to the strict nature of the dayc atomic number 18 center the narrator is in. We find that chinas motion towards a Socialist party is integrated d give birth to the peoples level, eve implemented and enforced in the daycares. This seems extreme to the reader, especially when the songs sung by the children are titled, Sweeping the base of operations, Working the Factory and Planting Trees in the Countryside.One doesnt need much context clues to figure fall out what these songs are about. Consequently, this level of extreme integration has caused Chinese fraternity to time value family as second-priority to this pursuit of Socialist. However, in this setting where the family isnt that well off, we learn that Heng and his siblings were spoiled by their paternal and maternal grandm other(a)s. In regards to monoamine oxidase Zed ong, the people of chinaware are led to believe that monoamine oxidase was in some sort of a deity, a god that affected everyones lives.Simultaneously, he was considered as a national tyro of everyone in communist China. The author demonstrates this when recalling the sweet of relief he felt when he heard that Chairman Mao had forgiven him, and through writing exercises that required them to repeatedly practice writing, Chairman Mao is our Great Saving Star, and We are all Chairman Maos good little children. To m each outside nations, including Americans, this seems like a way of brainwashing the people, especially at such an early age.However, we already know that the leaders of the Communist Party have no such fatherly intentions for their children. The Hundred Flowers Movement, a movement that encouraged Chinas peoples to openly express their voices and opinions, turns out to be a trap set to identify any rights in the midst of people. Trying to be helpful, Hengs mother is a ccused of being a Rightist and is sent to a labor camp to reform her. We observe this clash of traditional Confucian value in family with the policy-making allegiance to the Communist movement in Hengs father, even to the oint where he denounces his own wife. The loyalty to Chinas communist Party over family runs deep within its people. Upon hearing that their own father is accused of being a capitalistic and anti-Party, Liang Heng and his siblings develop enraged at their own father in other words, the children honored the communist Party more than they honored their own father, which is ironic to Liang Shang, since he abandoned his wife for the Party.In addition to the Hundred Flowers Movement, Liang Hengs life took another major turn of events with the intro of The Great Leap Forward, Mao Zedongs attempt to transform China from an agrarian economy into a more modernized Communist society via rapid industrialization and collective farming. Naturally, private farming would beco me prohibited and even accused as an act of rebellion against the revolution. However, the Great Leap Forward was a massive failure with millions of people dying from starvation. Liang Hengs family was no exception, and had to accommodate for these times.The majority of this narrative takes commit during the Cultural Revolution, movement that resulted from the failure of the Great Leap Forward. The main goal of the Revolution was to shift old, traditional, Capitalist China into the new, communist China to secure Mao Zedongs position in power. Like his other previous endeavors, we see that the Cultural Revolution brought with it confusion and chaos to the people, particularly having to do with the change in names of everything around them from roads to stores to public parks. Liangs friends have even abandoned their old names to adopt newer revolutionary names.Still, holding such high regards to their Chairman Mao and failing to see flaws in his methods, our narrator strives to one day carry his own Red Guard uniform, specifically upon seeing his sometime(a) sister wearing her own uniform. Ironically, his own home is later raided by these Red Guards because of his familys political history his mothers relatives have moved to Taiwan, she herself is branded as a Rightist, his father is a writer, or stinking intellectual. These circumstances make it difficult for Liang Heng socially, and he is constantly persecuted and ridiculed by the rest of society because of it.