Xiaohua In The Scar

One of Karl Marx’s main tenants of Marxist thought is the concept of alienation. Marx argues that within a capitalist system, alienation from labor is an inevitable byproduct; as a consumer, one does not know who produces the goods one purchases. Marx extended this concept to one’s own personal life. He believed that “what is true of man’s relationship to his work, to the product of his work and to himself, is also true of his relationship to other men.” (Marxism). Through adopting communism, alienation theoretically should not be possible. However, the Chinese landscape that existed in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution proved such an assumption false. As evidenced through Xiaohua in Lu Xinhua’s short story The Scar, many Chinese experienced severe familial alienation.
When Xiaohua was a young girl, her mother was declared a renegade; thus, in order to avoid political persecution, Xiaohua cut ties with her mother and ran away from home. Xiaohua’s alienation from her mother is revealed to the reader when adult Xiaohua is
riding on a homebound train. A young girl across from Xiaohua calls out “Mama!” and this cry “from the child… was like a knife through the heart” (Lu 10). This child’s outburst sparks Xiaohua’s memory. Scar then cuts to Xiaohua’s childhood, relaying the internal conflict Xiaohua experienced as a child. Young Xiaohua “wanted to rush immediately over to her [mother’s] embrace and beg forgiveness,” after her mother was accused of being a renegade; she simultaneously felt the need to hate her mother as if she were “a figure… to be hated and detested” (Lu 10). This alienation is one of the scars that the title is referring to. As a child, Xiaohua was torn away from her mother’s care as a result of the fervor that existed during the Cultural Revolution.
Xiaohua’s severed familial tie is representative of the paradox that existed in China during the 1970s. Although communism was theoretically supposed to eradicate alienation, alienation still existed in the form of broken social relations, in particular those within the family. Much like young Xiaohua was torn away from her mother, many children were separated from their parents due to ideological differences that their parents may have held. Old socialist policy would support Xiaohua’s choice in choosing Party loyalty over familial ties. Because the Party was considered to be like a second family that encompassed the nation as a whole, abandoning one’s own renegade parents was not viewed as a disloyal act, but instead viewed as a heroic deed done for China’s common good. However, it is interesting to note that Xiaohua’s attempted assimilation into the Party was also unsuccessful. Although she alienated herself from her family, she could not be accepted fully into the Party due to her mother’s stigma. Her application for the Youth League was rejected three times before she was allowed entry (Lu 13).
Unfortunately, Xiaohua’s alienation from her family only increases in complexity as she ages.
With the close of the Cultural Revolution, adult Xiaohua finds herself in an increasingly post-socialist era with changed leadership and ideology. There is a new standard in which the enemies are no longer intellectuals. Adult Xiaohua is faced with another internal conflict. Not only must she cope with the hardships that are associated with alienating oneself from one’s family, but she also must accept that, if she were to hold herself to the ideology of the current leadership, perhaps she did not make the correct choice. This juxtaposition of old and new societal norms gives further meaning to the alienation that Xiaohua feels when she hears the child call out “Mama!”. If Xiaohua had been born a generation later, such as the small child on the train, perhaps she would not have experienced the pain associated with familial
alienation.