Friday, February 20, 2009

Beijing Coma

In the book Beijing Coma by Ma Jian, Dai Wei who is the main character in the book is in a coma because when he was at a united protest which became a huge gathering of people and is getting out of control. Dai Wei is one of those students who is at Tiananmen Square he argues with everything the Gov. does. On June 4th a soldier shoots a bullet into his his sending him into a deep coma. As Dai Wei lies in his bed trapped in his own thoughts you go through his past with him as he recalls how he lived his past. At first you see him remembering what happen to him as a child. he lived in a poor family and that the Gov. controled everything you did. his dad was a rightist( pro-democracy) person who tries to turn people views on the Gov. and help infuse his ideas and the the community to get people to notice that there is a better way to govern a country. As when know that Dai Wei is shot protesting when now see where he gets his ideas and beliefs from that his father help mold his political beliefs with how he talked of a America and how great it was over there. But his Mother was not always as supportive with these political beliefs. she wanted their dad to stop putting these idea into her children's heads because she is afraid of having their family separated again. their father was taken to a camp because of his beliefs for a long time, as you can see that the mother is worried you want Dai Wei to take his fathers political ideas to heart and help protest for democracy. this is a interesting book as of how you are viewing the story from. Ma Jian does a very good job of capturing the ways the the communist Chinese Gov. And how they controlled everything in your life and made it very hard to live. I look forward to reading this book and going through it by blogging about it.

1 comment:

gwendolyn said...

Because of the shared political views of the Dai Wei and his father, I would be curious to know what their relationship was like throughout Dai Wei's childhood. And since you mentioned that the mother was not happy about the political ideas of her son and husband, their household environment would be an interesting aspect to hear about, like whether the parents remained together, or whether Dai Wei preferred one parent over the other.