Little Seamstress

Little SeamSTRESS-ED Butterflies in some cultures symbolize change, a “new self;” while butterflies in Chinese culture symbolize “new love.” A character who is a protagonist will change the most out of any character in a book. Throughout the book, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, we follow the narrator and his best friend, Luo, through their adventures of thievery and dangerous jobs. But, neither of them are the protagonist. The Little Seamstress is the protagonist, because like a butterfly, she metamorphosed into a new person and changed the most out of the three main characters in the book. In the beginning of the book, the Seamstress is like the other mountain girls, having never stepped foot in a city, “When she laughed I noticed an untamed quality about her eyes [...] Her eyes had the gleam of uncut gems, of unpolished metal.” (24) This is at the beginning of the book, before the Seamstress learns about any stories, and her “wild” quality makes her “unpolished”. Once she hears about the flower girl’s film, and has the novel by Balzac, Ursule Mirouet read to her, she suggests, “‘About those books of his-- what if we stole them?’” (89) This shows her growth by displaying her desire for knowledge beyond the Phoenix Mountain and her ways to obtain it. However, this just
However, the character who seems to have the least “screen time” wound up being the deepest and most developed character and the protagonist of the novel. Western literature, especially Balzac had changed her character to a tipping point where she began to learn of a world beyond the mountain, and let her character develop so much more than the boys who had only been vaguely inspired.So, the Little Seamstress if the protagonist because she is the one who developed the most out of all the characters in the