Isolation From Group Thought

In Thirty Years in a Red House Zhu Xiao Di talks about how, growing up, he rarely saw his family.  At one point his mother was at one camp, his father another, and his sister with family near Shanghai.  The root of communism idealist belief is equality and all for one and one for all.  I thought it was interesting when Di makes the distinction between Kennedy asking "not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."  The theory behind this is the same as communism--all for the good of the country.  However, there is a large distinction between the implementation of this belief in America and in communist China. 

A scene that was really moving for me was when Di came home to find his mom burning the playing cards.  They didn't know whether or not this would be considered counter-revolutionary.  That's fascinating!  They had to burn cards because they didn't want to seem of a different class etc.  Yet, they kept playing with them, simply using new cards each time.  This brought about the idea of how arbitrary what was and was not okay was.  Everybody was in a constant state of fear that something might be deemed inappropriate.  This is further reenforced by Mao's wife determining what art was and was not revolutionary based on her personal taste preference. 

Despite the main idea that communism brings a people together (and, in some ways it did: ie youths banding together, like-minded individuals seeking comradery and/or being cast off together) but at the same time, families and friends became disjointed.  There was a constant undercurrent of fear and isolationism amidst the tide of communism and a country seeking sameness.

Zhu Xiao Di

Reading Di's memoir, I can't help but think of the old saying, "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." What stands out to me is the way the leaders used simple words to promote their own rise to power. For example, the idea of being a revolutionary. The word itself has several connotations: we think of a revolution as an change in the balance of power, an overturning of the current government or leadership. It also represents an influx of new ideas, as in a revolutionary way of thinking--the Industrial Revolution, for instance. But here, Di shows that the leaders turned the word "revolution" upside-down.

"In those days, one always tried to be 'revolutionary.' Ironically, when the word 'revolutionary' was used in China it meant the opposite of what it means in the West. Instead of pertaining to radical change, the word implied conformity with the authority or being 'politically correct.'" (27)

I don't see this as a simple translation quirk. By using the word revolutionary, it implies a change and gives hope to the people that they are going to be part of a new and improved era. But as long as the leader remains unchallenged, the word can represent anything. In this case, while people at the time do not see the danger, reader are able to understand that the "revolution" is a scheme for power. The idea is calculated to gather as many followers as possible and make the rest live in fear. As Di states, "Many people were inspired by Mao's vision for the nation's future and obtained strength from Mao's words to deal with strife in their individual lives. However, as happened many other times, a positive thing soon became a negative." (36)

Again, this leads to another word being twisted: "rebel." In this case, the young people who believed that they were rebelling were really playing right into their leader's hands. They were not rebelling, but following orders. The Red Guard acts as an army that lengthen's Mao's reach and tightens his hold on the people.

"Mao encouraged the young Red Guards to dare to rebel against everything. Advocated by his radical followers, especially his wife, even violence was applauded and praised. They emphasized the animosity between classes, and dehumanized those who had been labeled as 'class enemies.' The effect was that often morals and common sense were eliminated." (46)

The words that once began the "revolutions" have become even more corrupted:

"Mayor Ke liked to play a more radical role in the Party and he claimed to be more 'revolutionary' than his colleagues. The trouble was that such people never stop. They ultimately claim to be the only 'revolutionaries' and charge those who do not agree as 'counterrevolutionaries' or enemies of communism. In many cases, however, they are just hypocrites, and never believed in what they advocated. Or only banned others from doing what they themselves wanted to do." (103-104)

Di's memoir shows that there is nothing positive to be gained by being swept away in words and ideas. The book also champions education. Most of the young people, like Di's sister, were forced to become peasant workers, sacrificing their education. Instead of helping their country, this was a calculated way to prevent the people from becoming too knowledgeable, to try and keep them from questioning their government.

The Cultural Revolution and Youth

"Once the blindfold was there, it was very difficult to restore sight again." (36)
The book "Thirty Years in a Red House" could very well use this quote on the jacket for it often deals with the idea that political movements can be changed and usurped in meaning through the establishment of a cult of personality which has control over the educational and cultural means of a given society.
While I found this thread to be fascinating, what really set me to analysis was the use of youth by Mao. The man appears to have calculated the means of staying in power so successfully that it reminded of watching a skilled chess player. Where Stalin and Hitler used direct threat, murder and fear to obtain their goals, Mao seemed to have coopted the youth, particularly teens, to redistribute power and secure his position.
The idea that teens have more psychopathic tendencies (I know the defi nitions are in flux, but we can view this through the umbrella of the larger Antisocial Personality Disorder spectrum) is gaining some credence in many research circles and the idea that Mao could recognize this tendency, and exploit is so successfully, is chilling. He created a schism between parent and child at a time in development they tend to occur naturally and then replaced any parental authority with the idolization of himself. It harkens back to the children in Russia who learned to be "stukach" or informers for the Soviet apparatus. However, in China, these children were mobilized as gangs to commit public humiliations and tortures. He also took pains to limit education at this point (which, interestingly, was contrary to the needs of the Communist party when it first began the revolution) which enabled further radicalization and indoctrination of the young. The process also included stripping from children any exposure to contrary thought processes by eliminating the "Four Olds": old culture, old thoughts, old customs, and old habits. (37) Looking back to the beginning of class and Lifton, we can see the making of an atrocity-inducing situation.

Cycles of Humans and History and Hearts

What is even more interesting and ironic is that, today, Taiwan seems to have eliminated the mass poverty that my father and many others in his generation wanted to eliminate in China. History often develops in strange circles, and as the ancient Greek tragedies show, heroes sometimes hurt or even destroy themselves trying to avoid an inevitable fate. They [the Chinese communists] saw something they disliked and tried to change it, but got exactly what they did not want. Had they simply left well enough alone, they might have reached their goal.

~ Zhu Xiao Di, p. 24

Everything we feared about communism -- that we would lose our houses and savings and be forced to labor eternally for meager wages with no voice in the system -- HAS COME TRUE UNDER CAPITALISM.

~ some facebook meme accompanied by a picture of a puffin (why a puffin?)

The first quote seems to offer Di's take on Lifton's cycle of atrocity-producing situations--that history is cyclical in a theatrical way--that perhaps understanding how normal people make atrocious decisions is the same as understanding the tragic hero. I wonder if in Di's mother's and father's private political talks, she ever put it in those terms, as a theater company director.

The second quote speaks to Di's experience as a student in America; seeing the criticisms he learned of America from his Chinese elementary education just now in college beginning to be understood by American students who were unraveling their skewed patriotic version of history; and the analogical realizations for Di about China. His professor remarked how good countries can be at pointing out the flaws of others while being blind to their own crimes--which is to name the downfall of tragic heroes. That they lack self-discipline and go too far, eventually coming full-circle and embodying the ills they'd set out to combat.

Another moment of Di in America informs the downfall. Di recalls reading Kennedy's famous "Ask not..." quote and being shocked at how his rhetoric was the same as Mao's, yet the two were supposed to be political opposites. Di concludes that

the difference is not so much the idea, but how it is spread in society. In a healthier society, an idea inspires people by its moral power. When administrative authorities were used to enforce an ideal or ideology, it often led to serious problems (84).

Separating religion from politics, to the extent that America tries to and that Maoist China failed, could determine the latitude a society gives its tragicness--if you're not conflating your government with gods, you might hold on to some sort of perception of those in power as flawed mortals whose ambitions have to be questioned. Whereas, when "Mao's thoughts" became "Maoism," the tragic hero [the country, the Red Guard generation] lost its ability to think the same way.

Hurka warning about the dangers of "governments divorced from the heart," and Di's account of loveless China at the time ("almost like Victorian England"), and Orwell's love of life ("which when all was said and done, agreed with me so well"), and Lifton's and Mandelstam's love of their respective spouses throughout their lives and works, and Baldwin's mindful attempts to keep love in his heart for his brothers--that stuff says a lot. That's always the other cycle. Makes me want to spend the next few years reading all of William Blake.

rise to power

It was interesting to read this book directly following Hurka's book, as I felt that the contrast between Hurka's father fighting Communism and Di's father working underground for them to be profound. As I was reading the first few pages, while Di tells us of his father's actions before and during the Revolution of 1949 and his following high-ranking position, I couldn't help but compare to Hurka's father's experiences, and how similar they were despite being on opposite sides of the issue.

Of course, nothing is that black and white, and as we delve deeper into the novel, we come to see the Communism become an oppressive force under Chairman Mao. As throughout the rest of this semester, in our books we have been reading, the issue of atrocities and oppression continually comes up and how these cycles can repeat themselves as younger generations move away from the lessons learned from the old. What really struck me in this novel was how gradual the brainwashing and takeover of Mao is; as this person comes into power, the country is taught to revere and respect him and that his teachings are wise and unquestionable. This mindset is perpetuated until Mao becomes almost a "demi-god", and to disagree or show dissent can be punished severely. We watch, along with Di, as this mindset sweeps across the nation and influences an entire generation, who are being brainwashed and have not even realized it. Di begins to get a glimmer when, as he is practicing for an air raid with his classmates, when the whistle blows he immediately covers Mao's portrait with his own body in order to protect it. He is praised highly for this, as it shows he loves Mao more than anything, including himself; Di reflects that he does not know if this was true, but something changed in him that day.

This is the kind of thing that very much piques my interest, as I can draw these parallels both to other works we've read this semester, and to our current political situation now. It seems that it can take so little for someone like Mao - who radiates power through false modesty (calling his ideas Mao's Thoughts rather than Maoism) and has a charisma that draws people in - to rise to a dictatorship on the backs of the countrymen who support and idolize him. These people hold him in such regard that, when they are punished for their perceived rebellious actions, they gladly take the blame. They go over their own choices and actions and try to find where they went wrong, so that they may believe that their punishment was deserved. There is something terrifying in that, to me. These are the seeds that take root and make totalitarianism possible, and the oppressed may not realize what has happened until they have lost everything and they are already in too deep to be able to change it. And so the cycle begins again.

Di: How Hero Worship Can Destroy a Nation

After reading Thirty Years in a Red House, I was again reminded of the importance of bearing witness.  Di, like Mandelstam, teaches us that turning a blind eye to persecution hurts both the victims and the society at large.  In Hope Against Hope, Mandelstam discusses how fear and intimidation kept the Russian people from speaking out against Stalin's years of atrocities.  Di, on the other hand, attributes the Chinese people's reticence to their blind allegiance to Mao.  Even when the Chinese people, including the loyal Underground Communists, were confused by Mao's actions, they never thought to question him. Instead, the people questioned themselves and their loyalty to Mao's vision.    Di's book is an exploration into the dangerous effects of hero worship on a nation.

In an effort to indoctrinate Chinese  youth, the education system focused on Communist teachings and Mao's propaganda.  Students were taught to follow, not to think independently, as it was far more important to raise loyal Communists than intellectuals.  This type of brainwashing turned a whole generation into mindless members of the Mao cult. Since Mao was beyond reproach, young members of his Red Guard committed acts of violence and cruelty against anyone who could be seen as a threat to Mao, including some of his longest running supporters.  These young disciples were taught that preserving Mao's power justified any and all acts of persecution.   Mao's systematic indoctrination was so effective that the Red Guard never even questioned his decision to reward their hard work by sending them out to the far reaches of the poverty-stricken countryside.  Any decree issued by the god-like Mao was seen as crucial to the Communist cause, a cause more important than any individual.  This dedication was so ingrained in the Chinese mindset that "love became taboo" (Di 43).  Loyal members of the Red Guard had no time and no need for romantic love. They were not to see themselves as individuals, but soldiers in the fight to preserve Mao's vision of Communism.   As Di stated, "One was only allowed to love the country, the Communist Party, and the great leader, Chairman Mao" (43). 

As loyal as his young followers were, Mao also enjoyed the allegiance of the older generation.  The Underground Communists, the men and women who fought the Japanese during World War II and Chiang Kai-shek during the civil war, were so grateful to the peace and relative prosperity they enjoyed for seventeen years that they were willing to see Mao's Cultural Revolution as a temporary and necessary phase of communism.  The fact that many of these Underground Communists had remained loyal to the egalitarian ethos of communism and had done nothing wrong didn't prevent them from blaming themselves for the Cultural Revolution.  For example, when Mao began criticizing government officials, Di's parents, modest people who lived to serve the people, "could see some sense in his criticism" (45).  Di's parents believed in the importance of community and would never want to abuse their power in any way, whether intentionally or not, so "when they were asked to make self-criticism in public meetings, they did it in earnest" (45).   Members of the older generation  had "complete trust in the Communist Party and Chairman Mao, and once the idolization of Mao made him a demi-god, people's confidence in themselves lessened" (Di 45).  In other words, members of Di's parents' generation were so in awe of Mao that they readily accepted his condemnations. 

With both generations under his spell, Mao, like Stalin, managed to destroy any threat to his power for years.  The major difference between the two was their differing styles of authoritarianism.  Mao created a mythical aura around himself that inspired blind loyalty, while Stalin stamped out dissidents through brutality and intimidation.  Both men effectively silenced their people, enabling a cycle of persecution in their countries. 

Then and Now

As mentioned in some of the previous posts, one of the most interesting bits of Thirty Years in a Red House  was how Di was able to show us why people would choose to follow communism. This of course brought back the idea of Chinese Thought Reform from Lifton, and the process of the youth turning against the older generation to follow what they thought was the best system.

I wonder (and hopefully we can ask him) how Di views Chinese youth and the level to which they 'buy in' to the government now. Obviously there are huge differences between the Communism that Di grew up with and the Communism (with heavy capitalist influences) that exists there now; however, the government still is repressive and controls a lot of information (internet access, etc.) How do these changes affect the way that people adapt and believe in the system? Does he feel that with the ability to access greater information (certainly information is easier to access now than in his time there, even with current restrictions) will eventually bring about the end of communism? Or will it continue to exist in a more open, pseudo-democractic/capitalist fashion? I suppose this is less a response than it is further questioning, but since China is the only communist regime we've read about that is still currently in power, it seems like they're pertinent.

"No one is seen in deserted hills, only the echoes of speech are heard."

I felt incredibly angry while reading this memoir, more than any other one we have read this semester. I think this comes from the fact that I did not know much of anything about China's modernization or the path towards it,as well as the feeling of shame that derived from my own actions in the past.

When I was still absorbed in my early 20's and obsessed with socialist idealism (very much disconnected from context and the repercussions of implementation) I remember a friend telling me that he was a Maoist. Knowing very little about China or Mao, I asked him why. He said that he believed the communist revolution in China was one of the most impressive events in the 20th century, and that Mao as a figure was inspirational and less harmful when compared to other countries' modernization process.

Now, considering the fact that I very strongly reject formulating my personal and political feelings around a human figure, I chalk up a lot of those punk kids (who were usually between the ages of 17-23) who liked to categorize themselves according to prominent political figures in history as naive an ill-informed. They wanted to latch onto a counter narrative that was opposed to the american/western ideology they were born to believe in. In this way they setup a binary system where the opposite of the failing capitalist system they see at home becomes the communist systems in the east. The answers to their problems could be found across the water. 

I was right there with them. 

I put a hammer and a sickle on red and yellow t-shirts and sold them to 21st century kids across Eastern Europe. 

I pledged allegiance to the United States Socialist Party propaganda and promoted these ideas in places where those closely related ideologues were used against their grandparents, forcing them into subservience, or fear, or torture, or death. 

We condemned Nazi punks yet propped up the same talking points Stalin would use to torture and destroy thousands and thousands of lives.

Our hearts were in the right place, but we were so disconnected from the context of our historical time period, and even worse, so were the kids who were getting an earful from us Americans, the same kids whose grandparents and great grandparents lived through this torturous form of suppression we were reproducing in 2010. 

Understanding that you can't choose your favorite political system like you can your favorite color, that red is made up of many different shades and displayed differently depending on context, is something that I've been learning throughout this course. When I decided to quit my band back in 2010, effectively sabotaging the entirety of the band in of itself, I think I was just starting to realize how ideologies can't be reduced to talking points or slogans pasted on social media pages. Still, its taken me years to untangle the deep rooted thought control that breeds through binary thinking. Xiaodi's memoir helped to elucidate the human side of these political systems. That was the most powerful part of this memoir to me; to see the people and who they were instead of the invisible faces behind slogans, orders, and doctrines. It is much harder to hate or love when you see the real human faces rather than a mask. 

---

Here are the notes I took, pointing to specific passages I find particularly interesting. 

"most Chinese believe that to take an individualistic stand was foolish. They had learned from experience or it had been drilled into them that the only way to survive was to go along with the tribe."




Right from the beginning of the book It's really interesting to see how the early communists in China were treated how radicals and anti-communists were treated in the Soviet Union. If you were suspected to be a communist or you were an activist of any kind you would be eliminated. We talk a lot of history repeating itself, and this is just another example of how it's not just about political groups being evil, but systems of power and control attempting to maintain their hegemonic positions through violence.




Even more complex is how the rise of communism in China came about: as a response to being occupied by another country while the government let it happen. I am wondering how violent that occupation was, and today even think about the reasons someone would feel nationalistic pride even if the opposing force was peaceful (which I doubt it was, but even hypothetically if they were, no one wants to be controlled ever).
"I still suspect that my fathers unexpected death in 1990 was accelerated by the student demonstrations in 1989. Although history never repeats itself exactly, events can be very similar. Witnessing such similar social tragedies must have been deeply painful to an aged man with such wide genuine social concerns. He certainly didn't want to see the event turn out to be such a tragedy (9)."




"It was true that a simple and thrifty lifestyle was encouraged for everyone, and especially for Communist government officials. It was considered sinful to waste, and officials were not allowed to live luxuriously (15)."


"When the word revolutionary was used in China it meant the opposite of what it means in the west. Instead of pertaining to radical change, the word implied conformity with the authority or being politically correct (27)."

"One of the articulated goals of the cultural revolution was to eliminate the 'four olds': old cultures, old thoughts, old customs, and old habits (37)."

This quote encapsulates a terrifying idea; erasing culture for the benefit of those in power. What's even more terrifying is to mobilize youth to turn against older customs and see old customs as threatening. To make anyone see their own cultures' history as an evil that needs to be eliminated, but also enact violence against those who carry even symbols of that culture, seems to me the most violent form of mind control there is.


"When they searched people's houses at night, some Red Guards liked to beat people. This made me believe that violence was a human instinct that would surface if it were not subdued by morals and other considerations such as punishment (39)."


Jesus Christ.


The exposing of people based on family history or past employment suggests that in this society there is no such thing as redemption. In addition, it feels like the same kind of system that attempts to expose people based on conjecture rather than punishable actions observed. What's even more ironic are the types of actions that are punishable or shameful. It seems that many of the sinful actions are things that were against old culture, such as divorcing wives after the communist revolution. That was a revolutionary act, yet now it is punished as unfaithfulness.

This all seems to culminate in the one quote on page 43: "the entire generation of youth at the time experienced a psychologically distorted adolescent development."

This immediately clashes with his father's philosophy that carries throughout the book, summed up in a passage on page 45:


"I often heard my father say, "it was the people who had supported is in our earlier struggles against Chiang Kai-shek's government. Now we the communists are in power, we should never forget their support and abandon their interest." He would always quote Lenin to end his talk, "Forgetting the past means betrayal."
















"Even at a personal level, I wondered if it was nobler to speak my criticism of our political system and to be put into prison as a dissident, or to keep a painful silence and use the limited freedom I had in my classroom to crib are independent thinking among my students. Which was nobler? 'To be or not to be: that is the question." Time has not her passes Shakespeare by, and the question he put forward is still meaningful today (211)."

Seeing Outside Your System

Throughout this memoir, I was impressed with Di's very sober and balanced take on growing up under the Chinese Communist system. There's a sense of the author emerging from childhood ignorance whenever he refers to the ways he used to see things, yet I was intrigued by the author's tone in such instances. He does not seem to claim that he was duped as a child, rather it seems more like the older "I" has widened his perspective. While Di experiences plenty of disillusionment and his family suffers through the Cultural Revolution and still after, the narration maintains a balanced tone. Rather than devolve into a bitter take down of Communist China, Di does not ignore "the positive values," both in the system and in his own experiences, and his analyses of the negative values are measured and thoughtful rather than vindictive. 

I was particularly taken with a passage in which Di jumps ahead to graduate school, and he recalls hearing American classmates remarking on the differences between the history they study now and the histories they were fed in middle and high school. Di realizes that his American contemporaries "had been taught mostly about the glorious part of American history and the advantage of its political and economic systems" (33). We can look back even further to a sort of indoctrination-lite in elementary school with the cheery, patriotic stories of the first Thanksgiving, George Washington and the cherry tree, etc, etc. We are told as children that America is the greatest country in the world and that capitalism and our brand of democracy are the only way to go, in a fashion not so dissimilar from the picture book propaganda that taught Di and other Chinese children that Communism was the only way to go, and that their heroes were doing constant battle with American and Japanese villains.

We extricate ourselves from these easy histories by exposing ourselves to worlds beyond our system. Much of the pain caused by the Communist system came because the Communist leadership was to insular. It sustained itself on the simple narrative that it had created, and leaders from Mao to Deng brutally repressed dissent or even ideas that didn't fall into line. Di does not fall into that line because it obscures the world beyond, and his father instilled in him the values that allowed him to grow outside of the narrow psychological plot provided by the state.

Questioning is Key

Although after completing Zhu Xiao Di's Thirty Years in a Red House I feel more aware of what I don’t know than I have throughout most of this course, I feel with even more certainty that reading this book has lessened that ignorance. Yes, I'd also been in the dark about much of the history we've encountered thus far, but I feel most ill-informed about the stories of China's history. 

Thus, I am grateful for Di's ability to tell the story of his life in China and of the political, social, and cultural issues surrounding that life while maintaining his determination to reveal the lack of logic and reason behind many of the decisions that were made by those in power. He is determined to chase his questions until he finds at least the beginning form of an answer. And he dissects the psychological causes and effects of this history. 

As he narrates his story, he reveals many "ironies of history," stacking up more and more evidence that there were few logical reasons for the country and its people to be living the way they were. It would have been enough to read of the impoverished conditions he lived in, of the camps his parents were sent to, the terror of the education system. But Di recounts much more, and necessarily so. His story would not be his story if it were not inextricably bound to the story of China and its government; in writing one, he must write the other. 

He does an immense job of bringing us closer to an understanding of why and how, psychologically, so many people would choose to follow communism, or choose to join certain waves of political groups. To us Westerners, it seems impossible to understand how a people could choose to be a part of a group that led to the country's misery, but Di's book helps us to understand the complexities (many of which are psychological) behind these issues. The following passage exemplifies his ability to clarify a people's thought process: "Yes, communism had such appeal that it seemed easy to understand!" he writes. "Anyone would believe that he understood communism while actually confusing the ideal with reality" (105).

I was similarly impressed by his ability to track the changes occurring in the people—in the country as a whole—throughout years and decades (and throughout the book). Though there are many of these moments to choose from, one that I recall particularly well is one in which he discusses learning English, and listening to the radio to do so. "My father found out what I was doing, but he didn't stop me. He just asked me to be careful," Di writes. "When I heard some interesting news related to China, I would tell my father and he seemed to be interested, too. Now it was more than just learning English. The society was gradually reopening to the outside world" (134). 

Interested as I was in reading of the impact that learning English had on Di and his country, I was perhaps even more interested in the explicit distinctions he makes for his Western audience. He writes of the difference between democracy and communism in a way that I'd never read before and in a way that helped me view these political terms with a new, important understanding. "Most Westerners thought of Communism and democracy as mutually exclusive systems, but in China, democracy had once been embraced by the communists, and democracy was both a method and a part of their goal" (201). After reading this, I realized that my inability to understand what these terms actually meant had been stopping me from truly understanding the problems within them and their roles (past and present) in different countries.

I was moved by his attempt to find an answer or cure to the “social disease” that plagues China, particularly by his interactions with his students. In the scene where he uses Shakespeare to plant questions in his students’ minds, where he admits that he doesn’t even have the answers himself, I found myself thinking how important this work (his work) is. Asking people to question what they believe and why they believe it; asking people to find the point where logic seems to have been set aside: this questioning is key to change, and it seems that if nothing more Di has begun a line of questioning that is integral to change in China, in communism, and in the countless situations that have and continue to lead to atrocities.

Writing with Fields of Light

As the semester has progressed, I am becoming increasingly aware of the complexity of the world and the toll these various forms of oppression has made upon entire cultures, races and countries. I had always considered my self fairly knowledgeable on world events, especially with the various world wars and the American Civil War. I could recite dates and numbers and even, in some cases, units and individuals involved in the events.

I remember reading Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels when I was in my teens and feeling for the first time that I understood some of the psychological motivations and the cost of going to war for some of these men and their families. I remember also walking Little Round Top at Gettysburg and seeing the woods where the 20th Maine Volunteer Regiment led by Lt. Col. Joshua Chamberlain held off the 15th Confederate Regiment and 47th Alabama Regiment all day on July 2, 1863.

The Confederates were attempting to flank the Union line at Gettysburg, and some historians speculate that had the 20th Maine failed, the course of the war would have been altered, in addition to jeopardizing a victory at the sleepy Pennsylvania junction.

Not too many years later, the movie Gettysburg was released and the first half (one of only two movies I've seen in my life with an intermission due to length) ended with the battle at Little Round Top. The entire audience was silent when the screen went blank after the harrowing stand. There were tears in many of the viewer's eyes and the stillness was extraordinary. The feeling lasting more than a full minute before the effect seemed to lift enough that people went out to use restrooms or stretch their legs. Even then, the patrons were hushed and seemed in awe of this moment in history come alive.

This combination of reading personal accounts combined with factual knowledge and the visceral experience of a movie has stayed with me my entire life. This semester seems to consist, more and more, of marrying this dry knowledge of events with the personal account. History lives in the words of the memoirs we've been reading. The true value of the idea of being witness is that humans seem to need a way to connect and understand the actual impact of these horrible events. The terror of one family is felt and can be wed to the data of the times.

That being said, the darkness of the 20th Century and it's toll on humanity is still almost incomprehensible. I think it would be easy to continue with memoir after memoir and find oneself almost overwhelmed with these stories. That's why Fields of Light came almost as balm for the soul. Hurka's lyrical writing and undercurrent of optimism were sorely needed and welcome. His account of his and his family's journey to find some space for freedom and triumph and perseverance was beautiful and very human.

The way Hurka incorporated the perspectives of his family directly into the text as internalized movements was also very interesting from a writing perspective. The construction is something I'm looking forward to discussing this evening.

Paranoia

In the books that we have read, we see how terror and fear are used to subdue entire countries. When people are arrested, tortured, and murdered without reason, it creates an uncontrollable, lasting paranoia. How does one live in a world in which nobody can be trusted? Can this really be called living, or is it simple being able to outlast the oppression? It is not just the secret police that people must fear, but they must also deal with betrayals by friends and neighbors. This type of atmosphere instills inescapable doubt and suspicion. Throughout the semester, we've seen this idea play out over and over again, which is why I wanted to examine the following passage in Fields of Light:

About four hours into Josef's stay, the door opened, and a man was shoved inside with such force that he landed, hard, against the far side of the cell. The steel door slammed shut behind him.  

"Bastards," the man said. He had a hard, unshaven face, and dark eyes. He rubbed his arms and legs. "I had an argument with the guard and he kicked me," he said. "He has no right to do that."

Then the newcomer seemed to take in Josef completely, for the first time. "I am glad to see that I shall not be alone," he said. "I am Franta Zeman." He held out his hand. (81-82)

 Upon my first reading of this excerpt, upon witnessing "Franta Zeman" being literally thrown into the page and hearing him insult the guards, my immediate reaction was to think, wow, what an introduction! In that split second, I believed that Zeman would be an interesting addition to the story, someone that could at least commiserate with Josef or give him knowledge that would help keep his spirits up. A few milliseconds after having these initial thoughts, the searing doubt crept in and my intrigue turned into the utmost suspicion. I realized that this was very likely a trap, and I took a moment to reflect on how gullible I had been.

All of these thought whirled through my mind in a time span of less than five seconds.

Of course, after meeting "Anton," I felt justified in my mistrust, like I was ahead of the game. But this short passage in the book made me realize just how easy it is to succumb to the type of distrust that we see in these novels. It makes me wonder. We'd all want to do the "right thing" if ever we meet difficult circumstances, but it's so easy to be swept away.

Thoughts After Hurka

As we've gotten further into the semester, and read more and more, I've started to consider my history. A history that, of course, traces back to an ancestry of which I know very little. In the first few months of my life, my mother filled out a "Family History" book for me to have later in life. (It's still sitting back at my parents' house in NY.) Each page is for a different family member, and she would fill in the blanks (name, birth date, death date, occupation, education, children, etc.). These simple facts, I've realized, are all I know of anyone older than my grandparents. And even now, without the book, I can't seem to remember much aside a couple of names. My parents were not first or even second-generation Americans. I'm not even sure who is. And so reading Hurka and Balakian in particular, who some of you have called "secondhand witnesses," has me wondering what kind of history I'm leaving uncovered. I also had the misfortune of losing my maternal grandparents at the age of two, and my paternal grandparents when I was in high school, well before I could have ever thought to talk to them about our family history, let alone consider what it would mean to write/document it. 

What I enjoyed in Hurka's book was to be able to see his research in action--conversations with his father in the hospital in Vermont, for example, and his trip to visit Mira. Balakian included this, too. And I also have been thinking of a book I read last semester called One Drop by Bliss Broyard, in which she seeks to find out the history of race in her family once she discovers her father's Creole history, which he had kept secret for much of his life. A long book, Broyard takes us on her journey of research and discovery, too. 

What all of this also makes me consider, though, is the notion of atrocities and survival that has seemed to hang over all of these twentieth-century memoirs. I wonder, if I were to look back, would either of those be present in my family history? This is related to Michaela's post, I think, in the questions of what is "memoir worthy," and what prompted Hurka, in this case, to feel that urgency to write this memoir. How did he know this was important? Or is it always important? History, it seems, is always important, especially in the way it informs the present. 

However, I'm also thinking of the other books we've read this semester that were firsthand accounts of history. Some written not long after the particular event or set of circumstances. And in that case, how can we know that we should write about our own present rather than telling the story of a family history and working to preserve that past. I'm not sure there is an answer to the question of which to write or focus on, and perhaps the solution or compromise is to understand that even if writing in a present context, history is still important. 

Where Do I Fit In It All? The Michaela Papa Story

As I read through other people's blog posts, I couldn't help but realize that a lot of us are thinking in terms of us.  Maybe that's the point of memoirs.  To read about somebody else's life through the lens of you--what I bring to the table when I read: my history, my thoughts, my beliefs.  Everybody takes something different from a memoir and it's interesting to see what and why that is. 

The more I read about other people's documented history and perspectives, the more I think about my own.  How much do I really know about my family?  I know the basic history, but I'm sure there is more.  My great-grandmother immigrated to America from Italy and got her eye shot out by a bullet machine while she was working in a factory in WWII.  But, should I wrote a memoir on her?  What makes something memoir worthy?  If there is a story to tell, write it--but there is ALWAYS a story to tell. 

I'm curious to find out what prompted Joseph Hurka to write this memoir.  Obviously, I read the book and know the events that lead up to it but was there one incendiary detail? Was there something he found out and he couldn't let it go unexplored, undocumented, unwritten?  Perhaps, the sad faces he describes his Czech family as having--exhausted and worn down.  Was there something that made him want to continue?  His dad working for the Resistance, seeing his grandmother's grave in Zebrak...what made him continue through this hard past?

Also, I was interested in the integration of Vaclav Havel's first major speech as president.  He worked that in really well.  I'm in an archival research class this semester and have been doing a lot of creative nonfiction writing.  The way he works in historical text and familial reactions and emotions is done very admirably. 

Moral of the story, I can't stop thinking about my family and my family history the more I read about other people's.  What if mine is super memoir-worthy?

Housing

In his opening chapters, Hurka did an excellent job of "touring" the Czech scenery, helping the reader visualize the space and how fractured it was. His descriptions helped me think about Communist architecture as a unique part of the landscape--more so than Mandelstam's descriptions, perhaps because he was describing a city as historically diverse as Prague, perhaps because he was commenting on the scenery after the fact. As Hurka and Mira ride the bus into the city from the airport, Mira comments on the hopelessness emitted from the architecture:

Apartments put up during Communist times. Aren't they terrible?

The reader understands that there's not only a difference between how people lived in and out of communist times, but also where they lived and what their homes were allowed to look like. The ahistorical, equalizing aim of Stalinist/communist regimes used architecture as a way of overwhelming all other narratives that would witness on behalf on any other way of doing things. Fascist architecture, too, sought to enforce a propagandist narrative, but did so with bombastic ties to the past and future, making their imagined architecture "fabulous"and expansive; compared to the communists regulations. It would be terrible to have to see architecture that reflects too perfectly your repulsion toward your ugly government--Hurka himself draws the parallel to neighborhoods in Harlem he'd passed on the way to airport. I was reminded of other times architectural relationships have influenced my perception of "home"--in South Florida, where I grew up, you can tell how long ago a certain neighborhood was supposed to be the avant-garde by observing how up-to-date is the design of their fast-food buildings, when the restaurant chains stopped investing in new state-of-the-art locations. In Gainesville, where I went to college, you can tell how old the campus buildings are by observing whether there are windows on the ground floor or not--the buildings built during the 60's and 70's were made riot-proof against the heavy student activist threat (a trait common to many American college buildings built during this time, I've found/heard). But, under those communist regimes, the imposed style of government-built buildings and the difficulty in getting materials if an individual wanted to build their own house would seem to totally delay or repell all attachments people would have to their homes or communities. But I think Hurka shows that those attachments are somehow much more difficult to sever than one might think. In America there's a pretty even divide between American-born adults who still live in or near their hometowns and those who move from home to home after leaving home. We try for that balance of people moving around and bringing new ideas to new places and of people staying put and improving communities they know.

framing in fields of light vs. black dog of fate

Like Jennifer, I too was reminded a lot of Balakian's Black Dog of Fate while reading Fields of Light. I appreciated the concept of Hurka as a secondhand witness, much like Balakian, but to step aside from the content for a moment, I wanted to note the framing of the book. I found myself comparing the way that this novel was framed with the way Balakian's was: in Balakian's work, we were presented with a cast of characters that was fleshed out and given life before we got to see how these characters identified with the past and what it truly meant to Balakian to uncover the atrocities of the Armenian genocide. In contrast, Hurka opens in media res, in a sense; we are with him on the plane to the Czech Republic, already in the middle of the story, in that it is through his immediate experiences on this trip to the Czech Republic that we are able to uncover, along with him, what happened in the past and how it affects his present experience.

I wanted to note this because I was struck by how, while differing from one another in their framing, both methods were successful and effective in bringing their stories to life. In Balakian's novel, we get to know Balakian as a character, grow up with him and his family, and finally feel the impact of his journey to Armenia while understanding what it truly means to him as a person and to his family as a people. In Hurka's novel, we are given less of that background context but, rather, tidbits are revealed to us as we journey with him through the present-day Czech Republic. I enjoyed how the chapters alternated between Hurka's trip, and the past memories of his father's experiences. I found myself, like Hurka, feeling the weight of so much oppression and atrocity as we covered the same grounds where, fifty years earlier, his father had fought and suffered. I felt, with Hurka, Barbora's sadness as she walked outside of the prison praying for Josef, while Mira and Hurka visited the grounds on a peaceful, quiet day. I marveled at the freedom of Prague's youth and appreciated that the Prague Hurka visited was not the same Prague his father had left so many years before, and just what that meant.

Hurka writes, " .... there was a newer, more positive attitude between people that Mira told me she had not seen for many years; citizens were not afraid to speak and be kind. During the Communist days, she said, these human sentiments and the collusion of humanity that they suggested were ultimately dangerous elements to the State, and they could land you in jail. The feeling I had, not only in these back-streets but also in the tourist areas of Prague, was akin to moving within the body of a giant who has carefully measured his breathing for too long, and now at least breathes freely and without danger or restriction." (p.110.)

The Similarities Between Hurka and Balakian

I enjoyed Fields of Light.  It reminded me a lot of another book I truly enjoyed reading in this course, Peter Balakian's Black Dog of Fate.  Like Balakian's book, Fields of Light is a young man's exploration into his family's somewhat mysterious culture and history.   Though Hurka doesn't seem to be as in the dark about his family culture as Balakian was, he does uncover, through family interviews and pictures, individual research and a visit to his family's homeland, far more insight into his father and his father's family than he ever had, just as Balakian does.  Both men are also incredibly moved and forever changed by their visits to their family's homeland.  For Balakian, his journey to Armenia brings him face to face with the unacknowledged genocide of his people.  For Hurka, his visit to the Czech Republic and to his aunt Mira allows him to truly understand what the Soviet Union's communist stronghold did to the Czech people and how much his father sacrificed in his stubborn fight to free his country. 

While reading Hurka's book, I was drawn to his style of writing and the format of his memoir, both of which reminded me of Balakian's book.  Both books are written by men who grew up in suburban America so there is a similar sensibility in their storytelling and the way they struggled to understand their fathers, who both seemed to vacillate between being staunchly American and yearning for their hidden cultures.  Both men are talented writers who have studied the art for some time, and that is evident in their descriptive, heart-wrenching prose.  Their  lyrical writing truly evokes images of the people around them and the historical places they visit.  They both manage to convey through words the complexity of a culture that has fought against being erased throughout its history.   They also manage to give a face to the suffering of their people through well researched and well reasoned imagined scenes.  Hurka, for example, imagines the thoughts that must have been running through his grandfather's mind as he waits for a train, shortly after the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia.  By doing this, he puts the reader in the mind of an average person trying to live during such a precarious time.  Balakian did a similar thing when he chose to re-create Dovey's story as a first person narrative passage.  Obviously, Balakian couldn't know for sure what thoughts were going through Dovey's head and the exact conversations she had as she was marched across the desert, but he made this creative choice anyway.  He did so to make Dovey's suffering more powerful and relatable. And he succeeded.   They both followed up such personal stories and anecdotes with detailed historical accounts to give the reader a point of reference and to lend a sense of authority to their memoirs.  Hurka, for instance, followed up an imagined scene of his grandfather looking at a newspaper with a picture of Reinhard Heydrich on the front page with a historical account of Heydrich's assassination by two Czech Resistance fighters.  Balakian utilizes a similar method when he includes a history of the various Armenian cities after a scene in which he has a heated debate with his aunt about the use of poetry.   Both men manage to seamlessly weave the personal with the historical, making for a more enriching read.

Most of all, these two books are similar in that they both explore cultures that have struggled for existence.  In Black Dog of Fate, Balakian delves into the history and culture of Armenia, a country that has been persecuted throughout its history.  The Armenian people, as a whole, were almost completely eradicated by the Turks during the World War I genocide, which, to this day, is still unacknowledged by the global community.  This genocide, along with a lack of global support, had forced Armenians to be without a country of their own for many years, leading to various Armenian diasporas.  These diasporas, in turn, led to the dilution and disintegration of the Armenian culture and history.  Balakian uses his book as a way of remembering an entire generation of Armenians lost to genocide and to keep Armenian culture and history alive.  His book teaches readers about the resiliency of the Armenians, a people forced to honor their traditions and lost love ones in secret for many years.  In a similar vein, the Czech Republic, formerly Czechoslovakia, has fought for its own identity and independence throughout history.  After years of serving the Habsburg Empire, Czechoslovakia declared it independence in 1918 and became a democratic society, similar in structure to that of the U.S.  Czechoslovakia then enjoyed a couple of decades of peace and prosperity before being invaded and absorbed by the Nazis.  At the end of World War II, Russia "freed" Czechoslovakia shortly before it enslaved Czechoslovakia in the chains of Soviet communism.  For decades, the Czech people fought to return to the prosperity and freedom they experienced under Masaryk's democratic leadership.  Hurka's book is a memorial and a celebration of the Czech people's long fight for their freedom from communism.  His book reminds the world that the Czech people were unwilling to be absorbed by other cultures.  They were a people who fought long and hard against totalitarianism.  In essence, Hurka and Balakian both teach readers the importance of bearing witness in an effort to avoid cultural extinction. 

Pictures of the Past

The presence of the pictures was something that struck me while reading Fields of Light. Their use in exploring a family history was a fascinating choice on Hurka’s part, especially in the earlier chapters. Since we, as readers, know little about Hurka’s past, both his and that of his family, we are placed in a similar situation that he once was. Starting from the image that opens the book, of his grandfather, aunt, and father, which, to us, is a mystery before we begin reading. Then, as he explains it to us, it takes on a different shape than just a random artifact, but instead gains a story, gains its meaning. It had me thinking about what sort of connection we can have to images of the past, as they are often the only gateway that we have into actually seeing the past, as opposed to strictly keeping it within our imaginations.

That being said, the information that we are supplied (and I am suspecting that was relayed to Hurka through family testimony with corroboration with whatever records may still have existed) is that which, while providing a sort of grounding for understanding their context, doesn’t necessarily bring us any closer to the truth of what may actually lie within the photographs. All we have to rely upon is the stories that Hurka is told, which we are now told in turn through the text.

 I suppose this is something that I’ve been thinking about this entire course so far: the subjective experience of history. While reading this book, with a focus again toward the start, with Czechoslovakia’s first president and democracy, to how the nation is essentially abandoned by its allies before the Nazi invasion, and so on, are views from one group of people. We have to rely on Hurka’s telling and the sources that he used. While I do not doubt the stories relayed of the family’s history, I’m sure there are other accounts of the other side of the coin, though I suspect it would be infused with propaganda.

I'm going to go a little off topic to make a separate connection here when I admit that a lot of these thoughts were brought about by a conversation I had with girlfriend yesterday. She spent time over the weekend with her family down in DC, but they all originally hail from St. Petersburg, moving to the States in 1998. She was showing me pictures of their history, which gave an interesting look into the USSR from a familial perspective in the 1980s, which further struck me because she didn’t know all the stories to the photos that were from previous decades. I found myself wanting to know these unknown tales, the same way that I wanted to know the ones of those that Hurka included in Fields of Light. Thankfully, in one instance, I was able to get them. 

The Incomplete Witness

I found (as I'd guess most of us did) that Mr. Hurka's text was most similar to Hope Against Hope in that they both place the author in the role of the secondhand witness (as Chris discussed in his blog post). However, I found that Hurka had a bit of a disadvantage only because he was writing from a generation behind his father and Mira, and thus, there were pieces of his witnessing that were missing.

This is not to disparage the book (which I thought was fascinating), it was just interesting to see the difference in detail between Mandelstam and Hurka given that they were covering a lot of the same ground (Communist oppression) from the same secondhand standpoint. It seemed Hurka wasn't able to get into the same level of specificity and detail that Mandelstam was, and at times, it distanced me from the trauma and terror of the period his father must have lived. The closeness that Mandelstam had to the situation allowed her to report with much greater clarity, and also to get into each episode of her husband's struggle with more depth. Hurka seems at times only able to scratch the surface (also in part because his Father doesn't or cannot tell him certain things).

I wonder how this relates to how the act of witnessing can be diluted and weakened by the passing of time. We live in an age of instantaneous information, so anyone can bare witness to anything and have it saved online and dispersed to a large group of people (which can be good or bad, depending on circumstances, but that's another argument). But when I think back on past traumas or more restrictive societies (North Korea, Turkey cracking down on social media), I wonder how much we'll ever be able to understand if the only witnesses we have come generations after the events have occurred. It seems that the generational gap and subsequently less detailed account/witnessing may make it easier for us to overlook or downplay atrocities that we know less about (with Hurka, we already have a great understanding of how oppressing Soviet-style communism was from other texts).