Plot - Red Scarf Girl

The Red Scarf Girl is an autobiography about Ji-Li Jiang's life during the Cultural Revolution in China. The exposition of this book is where Ji-Li talked about her life before the revolution. She lived with her grandmother, mother, father, sister, brother, and a housekeeper in one of the nicer neighborhoods of Shanghai. She excelled at studies and had hoped to lead a successful life. All this changed with the start of the Cultural Revolution, the rising action. It brought distress and torment to the family. They had to fire Song Po-Po, their housekeeper so that they wouldn't receive punishment for "exploiting" people. The family's political background also hurt them during the revolution. Ji-Li's grandfather was a landlord, and landlords were thought to be ruthless in that time. Because of that, she was taunted at school and her father did not allow her to audition for the Liberation Army Arts Academy. The climax of the story made her family suffer in many ways. There were two climaxes: one being when their house was ransacked and the other was when her father was detained. Their family seemed suspicious to the Red Guards, so their house was searched and the Red Guards took away anything that seemed “fourolds,” or traditional. Many of their clothes and prized possessions were seized or destroyed. Even though Ji-Li's father did not do any thing wrong, he was detained. It caused the family distress and made them worry. The falling action, or solution, has only happened to one of the climaxes. We learned that it was Uncle Zhu who made up a false story about Ji-Li’s father to get himself out of custody, and that was why Ji-Li’s father was detained. However, their family never regained possession of the belongings that were taken away from them during the search. Since the problem has not been solved, there has also been no resolution. Ji-Li and her family are still struggling during the revolution. It only seems that Ji-Li's life seems to be getting worse, as she has just gotten kicked out of the Revolutionary Commitee. I have not finished reading the autobiography yet, so I can not yet identify the theme fully. However, I believe part of the message is that if you believe in yourself and are persistent, you pull through hard times quite easily.