Red Scarf Girl Analysis

The year? 1966. The place? China. Savvy historians out there will realize just how important that date is. Ji-li tells us that it's the "year the Cultural Revolution started" (P.7). T...

First Person By the time the book is over, we feel like we're good friends with Ji-li. Why? She's been talking to us for a couple hundred pages. Not only that, but she shares all t...

Red Scarf Girl is written by Ji-li, about Ji-li, and that makes it an autobiography. In case we didn't catch it, she tells us as much, too:

Suspenseful Reading this book is like reading the literary equivalent of the ">Jaws music. Our hearts are beating, our palms are sweaty—we just know something bad is about to happe...

When we're reading Red Scarf Girl, we feel like we're right there with Ji-li. (Not that we'd want to go through what she did.) We can almost see the propaganda wall or her school litt...

You might say the title—Red Scarf Girl—tells us all we need to know about Ji-li. For starters, she has a red scarf that helps define her (head on over to "Symbols" for more on this). Early on,...

In the end, Ji-li beats up everyone who ever made fun of her class status, frees her dad from jail, and starts a new revolution of her own. Right? We wish. In reality, not everything is tied up in...

Red Scarf Girl is an autobiography written from the perspective of a fourteen-year-old. Ji-li is open with us, and her writing style is easy to understand; she also uses enough detail to make us un...

Dancing Queen Ji-li is over the moon when she's asked to try out for the prestigious Liberation Army troupe. Her joy quickly fades to frustration after her dad tells her that her family won't pass...

What's for dinner? Not steak, that's for sure. Ji-li never had a steak in China because food was rationed even before the Cultural Revolution. (Source) You'd think a writer would need some time to...

If you're after some between the sheets magic, this is not the book for you. It's an autobiography about the Cultural Revolution in China, so there's not really much room for romance. In fact, Ji-l...

Literary and Philosophical References Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (11.2) Pop Culture ReferencesConstantin Stanislavski (1.56)Charlie Chaplin (1.56)Snow White (2.4)Aladdin (2.4)Chairm...