Underlying+Themes

//**"Knowledge is power"**// Throughout his novel //Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress//, Dai Sijie writes about the power of real literature and its necessity within culture. Within the first chapters of his novel, Dai Sijie creates an extremely lifeless, monotonous setting lacking creativity, dignity, and the presence of deliberate living. Later in the novel, when Luo and the narrator become enticed by a case of novels that the closed-minded Chairman Mao had prohibited, traces of hope and free thought are brought forth within many of the novel's characters.

What makes us civilized? Within Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, Sijie writes about what makes humans civilized. He creates a conflict within the relationship between the Seamstress and Luo: Luo wants to truly //change// the Little Seamstress and educate her in order to make her civilized. He says that "... she's not civilized, at least not enough for me!" (p.86) and utilizes his storytelling and access to books not to open up new depths of his mind, but to take away the essence and simplicity of the Seamstress in order to "civilize" her in his own eyes. The surprising ending of the novel leaves readers to ponder if he Little Seamstress's new found knowledge helped or hurt the novels characters.