son of the revolution
Andrew Clark
HIST 1020-002
Son of the Revolution
"Son of the Revolution" written by Liang Heng and Judith Shapiro is a story of Liang Heng's life when he grew up during the tumultuous times of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. This revolution lasted from 1966-1976 and caused major social changes as well as destroyed their economy, but was a brilliant strategic move by Mao in the power struggle he instigated. He knew it would not be easy to purge the communist party of it’s leaders. The novel Son of the Revolution showed the incredible hardships Liang, his two sisters and his parents experienced under Mao Zedong's rule. The Son of the Revolution focuses on the role of family, the dramatic impact of the government and the major political reforms that took place during this time period under Mao. The greatest impact of the The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was Mao’s effort to control the education for the Chinese youth. This not only weakened Chinese society but it made their return to a productive society extremely long.
The story begins with the divorce of his parents because his mother was viewed to be a rightist, he experiences first hand the One Hundred Flowers Campaign and the Great Leap Forward. The government is portrayed as a good government with the interest of the people in mind. However after his father loses his job as a Journalist at the Hunan Daily newspaper for being an intellectual, we soon see that the government doesn’t have the public’s best interest in mind. Red Guards like his sister Liang Fang go make search raids in support of Mao’s rules, "We have a schedule to follow. Every night we go to a series of homes and go through every book, every page to see if there's any anti-Party material. It's an incredible amount of work. We have to check all the boxes and suitcases for false bottoms and sometimes pull up the floors to see if anything's been hidden underneath" (Heng and Shapiro 70). Liang and Shapiro reveal how the
HIST 1020-002
Son of the Revolution
"Son of the Revolution" written by Liang Heng and Judith Shapiro is a story of Liang Heng's life when he grew up during the tumultuous times of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. This revolution lasted from 1966-1976 and caused major social changes as well as destroyed their economy, but was a brilliant strategic move by Mao in the power struggle he instigated. He knew it would not be easy to purge the communist party of it’s leaders. The novel Son of the Revolution showed the incredible hardships Liang, his two sisters and his parents experienced under Mao Zedong's rule. The Son of the Revolution focuses on the role of family, the dramatic impact of the government and the major political reforms that took place during this time period under Mao. The greatest impact of the The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was Mao’s effort to control the education for the Chinese youth. This not only weakened Chinese society but it made their return to a productive society extremely long.
The story begins with the divorce of his parents because his mother was viewed to be a rightist, he experiences first hand the One Hundred Flowers Campaign and the Great Leap Forward. The government is portrayed as a good government with the interest of the people in mind. However after his father loses his job as a Journalist at the Hunan Daily newspaper for being an intellectual, we soon see that the government doesn’t have the public’s best interest in mind. Red Guards like his sister Liang Fang go make search raids in support of Mao’s rules, "We have a schedule to follow. Every night we go to a series of homes and go through every book, every page to see if there's any anti-Party material. It's an incredible amount of work. We have to check all the boxes and suitcases for false bottoms and sometimes pull up the floors to see if anything's been hidden underneath" (Heng and Shapiro 70). Liang and Shapiro reveal how the