In last week’s class, we discussed the reading of “Iron Child,” a short story during the Great Leap. The excerpt has a unique take on remembering the Great Leap because the report uses a child to tell a story of living during that period. The problem with the perspective of a Child is that some of the stories are exacerbated, and parts aren’t entirely genuine.
The story explains how most children were put into a nursery while everyone else in their families was forced to work in construction. You were required to work if you were old enough to hold a shovel or hoe. The children in the nursery never saw their families because they were told they ate and slept at the construction sites. In the foster home, children would look through the wire fence, hoping to see a family member from down the street. The children were usually punished for trying to talk to people as they walked by, and many people who passed by ignored them. The narrator explains that the children sat by the fence watching the workers as they conducted hard labor, looking like zombies going from task to task. A dragon appeared where all the workers worked around.
The question is, what is the dragon? Why did a child in an orphanage use a dragon as a metaphor for something else. the narrator also said how the people worked near and around the dragon-like ants on an ant hill, so this could’ve been a factory. Another creation of the child’s imagination was when they stumbled upon the “Iron Child.” In the story at a low, the narrator has this “Iron Child” appear, which seems very interesting because they say, “I saw the kid who asked me the questions. I saw that he was my height. I saw that he wasn’t wearing any clothes. I saw that his skin was rusty. It seemed to me that he was an iron child. I saw that his eyes were black. And I saw that he was a boy, just like me.” (SHIFU, YOU’LL DO ANYTHING FOR A LAUGH | Kirkus Reviews). It’s interesting in a time of distress, the narrator chooses to implement a character that is a “reflection” of themselves. I find it fascinating how the writer uses the memories from the orphanage but adds a twist. This twist could help the narrator suppress memories of the past that could affect them over time. Many genre writers use this technique to hide their memory and try to forget the awful things that happened to them.
Due to the cruel nature of the orphanage and the trauma sustained in their life, I believe that these imaginations suppress memory. Like war veterans, people who undergo such traumatic events tend to bury their trauma by altering their memory to help cope. I believe that through the little boy named “Iron Child,” the narrator used a fictitious person to help guide themselves out of the slum they were in. Also, when they used the dragon in their memory, I believe that refers to how all the people in the camp were forced to work and weren’t treated right. This mistreatment they witnessed and endured had a lasting impact on the child, which is why this story isn’t accurate.
“The Great Leap Forward.”
Mo Yan. “Iron Child,” in Shifu, You’ll Do Anything for a Laugh.
In this rewrite, I found it very helpful as a writer to go over past work. After some time away, I could look at my piece, attack it from a different angle, and add components that made my paper better.
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