Red Scarf Girl

“With my red scarf, the emblem of the Young Pioneers, tied around my neck, and my heart bursting with joy, I achieved and grew every day until that fateful year, 1966.” 

This passage introduces an important motif—the red scarf of the book’s title—and the central theme—that of “fate.” The structure of this sentence suggests that Jiang stopped growing in 1966—“I achieved and grew every day until that fateful year”—however, it becomes clear over the course of the book that Ji-li does not stop achieving and growing; she just grows in a different way, away from the “Young Pioneer” path of Communist China. She will achieve a more critical understanding of the politics of the Cultural Revolution and grow to understand the vagaries of fate.

“One afternoon, a week after the audition, I came home from school and saw a boy blowing big, splendid soap bubbles that shimmered with colors in the sunlight. One by one they drifted away and burst. In a few seconds, they were all gone. I thought about my beautiful dreams and wondered if they would drift away just like those lovely soap bubbles.” 

This is one of the first times in the text when Jiang uses lyrical, figurative language to convey how deeply affected she was by the changes wrought in her life by the Cultural Revolution. The use of soap bubbles to describe her dreams conveys their shimmering, elusive quality, and also their fragility.

“Alone in the corner of the school yard I saw a little wildflower. She had six delicate petals, each as big as the nail of my little finger. They were white at the center and shaded blue at the edges. She was as lonely as I was. I did not know her name. Softly I stroked her petals, thinking that I would take care of her, as I wished someone would take care of me.” 

In Chapter 1, Jiang describes her dreams for the future as being like soap bubbles floating in the air. Here, she describes herself as a delicate, lonely wildflower. The key feature of this description is isolation—the sight of a single flower growing in what is presumably an inhospitable place is an accurate reflection of Ji-li’s state of mind.