Su Tong Escape

Su Tong’s story “Escape” depicts a tragic life of a village man Chen Sanmai through the illustration of Sanmai’s nephew. Sanmai had spent the majority of his life on escaping from his parents, wife, family duties, established life, and everything even those chosen by himself. Before he gets married, his parents are there to find him back home; after marriage, his wife is the one who goes out to remote places to take him back. The circle between escaping and finding ends after he left for avoiding to rejoin the battle and his wife finally finds him in Heilongjiang for the last time. Through his life, Sanmai had became obsessed with making kites, flied the kites regularly, and even during his last minute of life he was looking at his kites. Chen
During his last moment, Sanmai still looks at his kites, only to find out that the strings of the row of kites are broken and all eight kites are hanging on white birch trees silently. The trapped kites are just identical to Sanmai’s end of life, in that he says “if I ran to the ends of the earth, I could never escape” and concedes that he could not escape from anything (453). Sanmai has spent all his life on escaping his life and fate, and till the last minute before his death, he still desires to escape from his wife’s embrace. Yet his last words were admitting that he cannot actually escape, and the dream of free from controlled and established life could never be accomplished. Though without strings, the kites did not fly freely but remain on the trees; nevertheless, without family connections and controls, Chen Sanmai still end his life unfree.
The unrealizable pursuit of absolute freedom in real life depressed Sanmai, and he began to place such dream on his kites as if the flying of kites represents and leads to his own freedom. Yet the kites end up not freely as he does. The tragic ending of Sanmai is settle as early as he began such dream, for it can never be realized in real