Balzac

My Book Review on “Balzac”

Storytelling can be found in every corner of the world. It is used to pass

the time, tell of past or current events, and is the way that we

communicate with each other. In Balzac and the little Chinese

Seamstress, by Dai Sijie, storytelling occurs during times of hopelessness

when life seems hard and allows the characters to live vicariously through

the tales told. The narrator and Luo use storytelling as an escape from

reality in times of desperation. The tailor is influenced by the stories to

the point where he changes the style of clothing he creates to escape the

boundaries of Mao approved clothing. The importance of storytelling to

the little seamstress is that she learns the importance of beauty, and is

able to leave the current life she lives. Throughout the novel the

characters use storytelling to escape the reality of life in either a mental

or physical way.

Both Luo and the narrator use storytelling to escape the hardships of re-

education in their small town on Phoenix Mountain. An example of them

escaping their daily lives in a physical way was when they got to leave

town in order to see a movie. The boys would go to the small town of

Yong Jing, watch a movie, and put on an oral cinema showÐ'Ё for the

towns people when they returned. We got two days off for the journey to town and two for the return, and we were supposed to see the show on the evening of our arrival. Back home in the village we were to relate the film from beginning to end to the headman and everyone else, and to make our story last as long as the screen version.Ð'ÐŽÐ'Ё (Sijie p. 21)

The narrator and Luo got time off of their hard laboring work to go back to civilization for a little bit. The power of re-telling the movies captivated the townspeople so much that they got to go as often as when a new movie would be released. After attaining Ursule Mirou, written by Balzac, the narrator did nothing but read for an entire day. The narrator says, By the end of the day I was feeling quite at home in Nemours, imagining

myself posted by the smoking hearth of her

parlour in the company of doctors and curates.Ð'Ё (See p. 60) This allows him to escape

the hardships of mountain life on a mental level by imagining that he is taking part in the

experiences and situations in the story. After stealing a suitcase full of western novels

from their friend four-eyes, the narrator becomes infatuated by book one of Jean-

Christophe.