Post #10 Form B

This part of Wild Swans was intertwined with moral decisions. People in the Communist Party, like Jung’s mother, were constantly forced to make very tough moral choices. On page 216, Jung’s mother is faced with the dilemma of deciding who, within her district, should be labeled as a ‘rightist’. This term basically meant that you were believed to be acting against the Communist Party and therefore would be sacked, made an outcast, send your family’s future down the drain, and be forced into manual labor. According to Mao, the Communist leader of China, 5 percent of ‘intellectuals’ were rightists. “Intellectuals’ were people who were literate. These people did not include the majority of the population but did consist of doctors, nurses, students, actors, engineers, technicians, writers, teachers, and scientists. Following the math Mao laid out, Jung’s mother’s district was supposed to have over a hundred rightists and she had to decide who they were. If she didn’t meet her quota she would be labeled a rightist herself and her entire family would be ruined. I couldn’t imagine being responsible for deciding whose livelihoods were more important, your husband’s, children’s, mother’s, and other distant relatives’, or the one hundred plus people’s who you were in charge of. Who would you feel more held more of your obligation?