Mao's Last Dancer Journey

Journeys have a mental nature, where intellectual processes take place and your mindframe can forever change. This idea is best displayed in Mao’s Last Dancer, where we see a young boy, Li Cunxin, rise from the depths of communism to a shining star in the dance industry. And through his life’s journey we are shown his coming of age and ideologies shift one country to another. The mentality of journey’s is also capitalized in the poem Journey to the Interior where the physical journey can parallel to a more complex internal struggle and confusion. Thus both Mao’s last dancer and Journey to the Interior convey the mental aspect of a journey.

The mental nature of journeys is demonstrated in Mao’s last dancer through the shift in ideologies: from Li Cunxin being a devote believer in communism and Mao’s regime to reaching freedom in capitalist America and Australia. Li Cunxin was brought up in QingDao, a small village under Mao’s regime, and through the his
journey as a dancer, he was allowed to see America for the first time. After settling into America, Li observes that, ‘Nothing I had seen so far matched the dark, decaying, depressing picture of America that the Chinese government had painted in my mind.’ This Reveals the Chinese perspective on the US and their thoughts towards the nation, in juxtaposed to what it truly was, it depicts America to be a dreadful place when compared to even the state in which China was in. This is where Li’s mind gradually frees from communist ideas chiseled into his mind from the day he was born. Cunxin uses characterisation when he demonstrates his attitude towards communism as a teenager; “My life now had a true purpose - to serve glorious communism. Once again I felt a powerful sense of belonging.” This portrays the influence of communism on his immature mind. This is later juxtaposed when Li dislikes communism after going to America as an adult, showing the reader his mental growth throughout his life’s journey. In conclusion we can see that Li’s life journey is of a mental nature because of his shift in ideologies throughout Mao’s Last Dancer.

Through paralleling a physical journey with a mental one, Journey to the Interior, addresses the mental nature of journey’s.
In this poem by Margaret Atwood the persona embarks on an inner journey and compares it to an explorer entering a new ‘uncharted,’ and,‘unmapped territory,’ where the inner mind analysing the purpose and direction of life. Atwood uses an extended metaphor in the poem comparing the a journey into the mind finding youself to a physical journey. She’s uses this technique in “easy going from point to point, a dotted line on a map, location plotted on a square surface” to explain that a journey in the mind is not linear, not a direct route like a normal journey. Margaret Atwood also uses simile and imagery to demonstrate that there is no saviour from the depths of your own mind when she says, “words here are as pointless as calling in a vacant wilderness.’ Evidently we can conclude from the analysis of the inner mind in Journey to the Interior that journeys embarked upon have a mental
nature.

The mental nature of journey in Mao’s Last Dancer is also established Li Cunxin’s mental growth in character throughout his early childhood. This growth in character is best expressed through the fables initiated at the start of the book. The fable, the frog in the well, talks about a journey of a frog who tries to escape the well and see the world outside, but couldn’t and had to be content with what he had. The significance of this fable for Li Cunxin is that it motivated him to go further out of the well in order to see ‘outside the well.’ Li’s coming of age is also seen through the witnessing of slaughtering of men and animals in his early infancy, “Two of the men crumpled onto their knees. One started to scream ‘I’m innocent...I didn’t do anything wrong! Please let me live!’ ...One, two, three…Guns fired. I screamed and ran home as fast as I could.” This left an everlasting mark of Li’s heart, and was demonstrated that in this world, life was not fair. Evidently we can see the mental nature of journeys because of the intellectual understanding seen at the start of Li Cunxin’s journey.

In conclusion it is clear that the nature of journeys is of a mental aspect as seen in Mao’s Last Dancer, where Li Cunxin’s ideologies shift and he experiences a mental growth in character, and Journey to the interior, where the inner mind is explored.