Post #12 Form B

People are very emotional in this book. Love, sorrow, wrath, jealousy, abandonment, loneliness, desperation, desire, it’s all here mixed together like a drama gone horribly astray. One moment people are in love, the next they are in mourning, the next they are jealous and inflict their anger on those around them. Many people have died from sorrow and abandonment. “I stayed at the bedside of the Delicate Concubine Xu, trying to persuade her not to let herself die. Beneath her linen sheet, she weighed little more than a feather. She spat blood and was wracked by violent coughing. She reached out for me with her frozen bony hand. We talked endlessly about our first few years in the Side Court, the Institute of Letters, and the late sovereign. I begged her to receive a doctor. She smiled and gave me no reply. I could see in her eyes her determination to follow her master into the next world. She died a few days later.” (86) Many more have been killed as a result of wrath and jealousy. It all happens so quickly that after a while it’s hardly even noticeable just how many emotions are experienced on each page.