Xiaohua In The Scar

One of Karl Marx’s main tenants of Marxist thought is the concept of alienation. Marx argues that within a capitalist system, alienation from labor is an inevitable byproduct; as a consumer, one does not know who produces the goods one purchases. Marx extended this concept to one’s own personal life. He believed that “what is true of man’s relationship to his work, to the product of his work and to himself, is also true of his relationship to other men.” (Marxism). Through adopting communism, alienation theoretically should not be possible. However, the Chinese landscape that existed in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution proved such an assumption false. As evidenced through Xiaohua in Lu Xinhua’s short story The Scar, many Chinese experienced severe familial alienation.
When Xiaohua was a young girl, her mother was declared a renegade; thus, in order to avoid political persecution, Xiaohua cut ties with her mother and ran away from home. Xiaohua’s alienation from her mother is revealed to the reader when adult Xiaohua is
With the close of the Cultural Revolution, adult Xiaohua finds herself in an increasingly post-socialist era with changed leadership and ideology. There is a new standard in which the enemies are no longer intellectuals. Adult Xiaohua is faced with another internal conflict. Not only must she cope with the hardships that are associated with alienating oneself from one’s family, but she also must accept that, if she were to hold herself to the ideology of the current leadership, perhaps she did not make the correct choice. This juxtaposition of old and new societal norms gives further meaning to the alienation that Xiaohua feels when she hears the child call out “Mama!”. If Xiaohua had been born a generation later, such as the small child on the train, perhaps she would not have experienced the pain associated with familial