"The Dream of the Red Chamber"

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that among the diverse themes of Tsao Hsueh Chin and Kao Ngoh's novel "The Dream of the Red Chamber" are the meaning of jade and stone as relates to Chinese religions of Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism and Chinese society. The author points out that another theme is played out through the feuding of the central characters, which is the authors' way of illustrating the decline of the feudal society. The paper relates that the main protagonists are Black Jade, Chen Shih-yin, who is a wealthy intellectual scholar and Chia Yu-tsun, who has been building up a reputation based on currying favor with higher-ups, all in the name of Chia gaining power personally.

From the Paper:

"The wayward, hustler-womanizer Pao Yu, who represents the bad side of the society that the authors write about, later moves into the Garden of the Total Vision, and rules over it as "a crown of beauties," Zhou writes. The girls in the garden are part of a concept of "pristine ignorance...oblivious innocence" and that is a situation that calls for the author to use the term "hundun shijie" ("hundun" means "chaos" in Daoism). Allowing the huckster Pao Yu to rule over innocent girls, a reader could easily surmise, is tantamount to the "chaos" in society, in the metaphor; insensitive rulers, power brokers in that 18th Century society were likely able to take advantage of innocent, powerless civilians in the same way as Pao Yu feeds on young women. Pao even has a dream that he makes love to his niece."

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