Sample Document 1

Benchmark - Close Reading

            In the tale of “Sealed Off,” by Zhang Ailing, a young woman named Wu Cuiyuan is travelling aboard a tram car in Shanghai, China in the mid 1940s. On the tram car are a variety of passengers, and once the tram car stops narration begins from the point of view of those on the tram. Readers are given a glimpse into the riders’ private thoughts and feelings, and it becomes clear that the title holds the key to a metaphor within the story. The title is reflected in a closing verse, and readers finally learn what, or who is sealed off. The metaphor contained within this narration represents the idea that not only is the tram sealed off from the city, but its passengers are emotionally sealed off from each other as their society becomes more infiltrated with war and its aftermath.

            “The lights inside the tram went on; she opened her eyes and saw him sitting in his old seat, looking remote. She trembled with shock - he hadn’t gotten off the tram, after all! Then she understood his meaning: everything that had happened while the city was sealed off was a non-occurrence. The whole of Shanghai had dozed off, had dreamed an unreasonable dream” (506). In this passage, Cuiyuan has just realized that she dozed off to sleep, to dreamland. Conversations that she had with the middle-aged married man named Lu Zongzhen did not happen. Cuiyuan thought that she and he had fallen in love in their brief time on the train, and Zongzhen had asked her to be his concubine. Maybe Cuiyuan fell asleep just moments after the tram stopped, after she graded the paper and “buried her chin in her hands” (501). She observes a medical student sketching, a little red shoe next to her leg, and then a husband who she predicts is unhappy in his marriage. Perhaps it was that moment when she drifts off as the “sun burned down her backbone” (501). This adventure occurs during the backdrop of World War II bombing raid or warning drill. The tram stops and once society disconnects from the chaos, they are able to reconnect as human beings. The tram transitions from a quiet tomb to a talkative community. The beggar speaks first, office workers next, followed by the middle-aged couple and then Zongzhen and Cuiyuan. It is as if the plug that kept them from being human was pulled; their personalities became uncorked. Living during the time of an active war in their country would have caused extreme anguish. For those few moments Cuiyuan observed normalcy, or so she thought. “She trembled with shock” (506) because it had not truly happened. It was unreasonable to think there would ever be rest Shanghai. Cuiyuan is the main character and her mood fluctuates between lonely, hopeful, and reflective.

            During this war, the Japanese were occupying China. Shanghai was a large, modern city probably full of businesses and other immigrants. This would have been a period of unrest for the Chinese. Ailing might have been using this piece to make a political statement about how the simple life had been taken away from the people of China, and that the people of her nation were acting like they were robotically pushing through. This moment on the tram gives them the opportunity and safety to be human again: to speak, think, feel, and dream.

            Like Ailing, Author Anna Akhmatova also lived during a tumultuous time in history, Stalin’s “Great Purge” of 1935-1938. Stalin was systematically destroying his nation for the purpose of making it better (by his standards). Akhmatova’s poem “Requiem” is holds a metaphor for a different grief-stricken society, as the main character “I” retells of being in the prison lines of Leningrad. Akhmatova had her own personal experiences of loved ones being imprisoned including her own son, and this is reflected in her narrative. The narrator is a grieving mother who shares time with other grieving women. These captives are not sealed off temporarily, but for an indefinite sentence of torture. They long to be freed by death, and in a similar way dream of a different life, “No, it is not I, it is somebody else who is suffering. I would not have been able to bear what happened, Let them shroud it in black, And let them carry off the lanterns…Night” (570).  Millions of people were sealed off in forced labor camps, and a female main character is also used here to display what can happen to humanity when people lose the ability to be human. The voice “I” is the main character and she shares the same feelings as Cuiyuan.

            “Sealed Off” and “Requiem” share commonality, one of which is the how the mind of a person in distress copes with trauma. One difference is that in “Sealed Off,” the protagonist is representative for all the Chinese people going through the aftermath of living in a war-torn country. Their comfortable lives have been interrupted. But in “Requiem,” the lives of the main character “I” and her son have been destroyed. Her son has died, and she has been left alone. The metaphor of being sealed off from society is present in each. Both authors provide scenarios in which the mind travels to a place where the body cannot. The metaphor of “Sealed Off” is speaking for a nation, while the metaphor in “Requiem” speaks for the wounded souls of just a few.

Works Cited

Ailing, Zhang. “Sealed Off.” The Norton Anthology of World Literature, edited by Martin            Puchner. Norton, 2012, pp. 500-508.

Akhmatova, Anna. “Requiem.” The Norton Anthology of World Literature, edited by Martin        Puchner. Norton, 2012, pp. 568-572.