In Broad Daylgith Essay

In Broad Daylight is ab place Mu Ying, nicknamed Old Whore. She has affairs with assorted men and is cosmosly denounced and paraded before the community by the fierce Guards who travel from another city and happen to know her bad name. Her dwarf peddler preserve Meng Su tries to rescue her from the public humiliation, only to be humiliated himself by the passing Guards, the spectators and his wife as well. Finally, he is found crushed by a train, and Mu Ying lies alone at bus stop, deranged.Written from the point view of a naive boy, nicknamed W encountere Cat, Ha Jin intends to portray through untainted and authentic lens a Chinese woman with a self-awakening feminist consciousness who stands up for her familiarity. Turning point number one in the story is when the questioning of Mu Ying has started and has to confess her crimes of criminal conversation with three other men. She then comes to the point where she explains the feeling of pauperisming a man holding her with hi s strong arms very detailed.After Mu Ying describes this feeling of sexual need, a woman who is the mother of pillage Hips speaks from the front of the crowd and says You have your own man, who doesnt lack an arm or a leg. Its falsely to have others men and more wrong to pocket their money (Jin 156). And on this moment Mu Ying is still recovering from a punch of the Red Guards and still replies with a smirk on her face looking down on her husband I have my own man? (Jin 156). My man is nothing. He is no full(a), I mean in bed. He always comes before I feel anything (Jin 156).As a central focus of the public denunciation, Mu appeared to be rather tranquillise when she was caught at home. She neither protested nor said a word, but followed the Red Guards quietly. In her eyes, these Red Guards were only a group of children. She did not expect that the join forces of the Red Guards and the revolutionary masses in the town would be tremendous enough to put her in destruction more im portantly, she did not think that her behavior had violate any rule or law. When her husband appealed to the Red Guards, she stared at him without a word, and a faint smile passed the corners of her mouth.In her yes, the behavior of her impotent husband is scholarly and ridiculous. When the Red Guard asked her why she seduced men and paralyze heir revolutionary will with your bourgeois poison (156), she responded rather calmly with a rhetorical question, Ive never invited any man to my home, have I? (Jin 156). When several women hissed in the crowd, she even tried to persuade them by citing her own experience Sisters, she spoke aloud. alone right, it was wrong to sleep with them. But you all know what it feels like when you want a man, dont you? Dont you once in a while have that feeling in your bones? Contemptuously, she looked at the few withered middle-aged women standing in the front row, then closed her eyes. Oh, you want that real man to have you in his arms and let him tou ch every part of your body. For that man alone you want to blossom into a woman, a real woman (Jin 156). As a group of juveniles, White Cat and his companions know little about the adult life. This limitation behaves their participation a journey of discovery. When adults burst out laughing at Mu Yings assertion of her husbands impotence, the teenagers appeared to be puzzled. The dialogue between them shows this point clearly Whats that?Whats so funny? Big Shrimp asked Bare Hips. You didnt get it? Bare Hips said impatiently. You dont know anything about what happens between a man and a woman. It means that whenever she doesnt want him to come close to her he comes. Bad timing. It doesnt sound like that, I said (Jin 157). Obviously, Bare Hips does not know any more than Big Shrimp though his impatient tone tries to conceal this ignorance. Ignorant as he is, Bare Hips makes so bold as to cry at Mu Ying, Shameless Old Whore (Jin 154). Impossible to perceive, the innocent children are acting the role of accomplice in the public denunciation against Mu.Their thoughts and behaviors manifest the influence they have taken from their parents. In this sense, the innocent teenagers have degenerated from lovely angels to dreadful demons. This is a turning point because when the red guards pulled Mu Ying out of her house and started patrolling her through the city streets to get her to the school yard to sentence her, her husband came running from a street corner begging to let Mu Ying go Please dont take her away. Its my fault. I havent disciplined her well. Please give her a change to be a new person. I promise, she wont do it again (Jin 155).And even though I have a feeling Mu Ying does not take the Red guards judging protocol as a serious punishment at that point, once she has confessed everything it all gets to her. That is when she gets the feeling that she really has humiliated and damage her husband, because she is looking for him afterwards she got hit with an ink bottle, only to find that he suddenly left the scene. That is the point she says she does not want to be punished after all and promises to better herself. What I saw as turning point number two becomes clear in the last paragraph, which means I did not see that really as the conclusion.It is the scene where Mu Ying is lying alone at the bus stop, saying Take me home. Oh, help me. Who can help me? Where are you? wherefore dont you come and carry me home (Jin 156). It is a perfect example of You dont know what you have until it is gone. The second train that use its steam horn killed the husband of Mu Ying and made her a widow and truly alone. What I mean with that is that Mu Ying already felt alone because her man was not good enough for her. This feeling of loneliness combined with her husbands underachieving partly lead to her committing adultery.Now with her husband dead, she finally exactly knows what it actually means to be alone. But moreover the story clearly shows that her husband saved her live once, after she was raped and now he again tries to get her off the hook, by taking the blame. Her grudge against men because of this rape is probably the other part of why she turned to adultery. It is almost shameful to observe that Mu Ying herself is not punished as the Old Whore, where Meng Su did not only try to take the blame, but also gets himself punished like in Old China.While the Red Guards only make her walk down every street saying the words I am an evil monster (Jin 160), instead of burning her alive, Meng Su is beheaded like in the old days. I strongly felt a parallel between the blare of horns announcing the beheading of Mu Yings husband. In Ha Jins story, the rough wipeout of Meng Su, the husband, constitutes an unscheduled event, which brings White Cat and his companions to the violence of the adult world. The public denunciation of Mu Ying was no longer a thrilling scene, but something that touched them to their souls, evoking the ir introspection or maybe disillusion about the world.Bare Hipss vomiting is a strong signal, indicating the shocking effect that the violence may have brought to him. After the shocking experience, they are no longer innocent adolescences, but adults struggling at the verge of understanding. This whole story turned out like a gruesome, sad circle of misery and unanswered love to me. I think Meng Su loved Mu Ying dearly, but couldnt take her grudge against men away that she got from the rape by the Russians. Imaginably, as a victim of the gang rape, she must have experienced a hard time of being treated with disdain.Instead of being hit to death by the accident, she has walked out of the shadow of the concept of chastity, and began to enjoy the pleasure of the flesh as well as economic benefits brought about by men, the invader of her virginity. The bitter time she has experienced has actually hardened her heart and paved the way for her further self-liberation, both physically and spiritually. Meng Su couldnt cope with not conservation her from the shame that the Red Guard trial put on her and killed himself, leaving his beloved Mu Ying really alone and helpless at the bus stop.