Study Guide
Final Essay Questions for Red Scarf Girl by Ji-li Jiang
Below are the questions that you will be asked to answer for your final test on Red Scarf Girl. There is also a vocabulary list of words you will need to k now. The test itself will be written during class, but you may prepare up to three 3 x 5 index cards of notes at home to use during the test. Your test will be written in ink.
1. How does Ji-li’s opinion about the Communist Party and its leader, Mao Ze-dong, change over the course of her story? Name some of the most crucial events and explain how they change Ji-li’s feelings about the party.
2. How do family relationships change as a result of the Cultural Revolution? Describe how Ji-li is torn between her love for her country and her love for her family. Give evidence from the story to support your answer.
3. Ji-li states: “Until now I had never doubted that I could achieve anything I wanted. The future had been full of infinite possibilities. Now I was no longer sure that was still true.” (page 18). How are Ji-li’s opportunities limited by the upheaval caused by the Revolution? How does the political situation in China affect Ji-li’s education, her family’s financial situation, and even her basic freedoms?
4. What were the Four Olds? Who decided what was the Four Olds? Give three examples of things that were destroyed by the citizens and the Red Guard because they were Four Olds. How did the notion of ridding the country of the Four Olds become damaging?
5. What was Ji-li’s father’s job? Why was Ji-li’s father taken into custody and detained? How did party members try to get her father to “confess”? When he refused to confess, what did the Red Guards ask Ji-li to do?
6. Ji-li’s relationships with her classmates and teachers often became strained as they learned about her class status and the persecution of her family by the Red Guards.