The Dragon's Village & Things Fall Apart

There are two significant differences between the novels The Dragon's Village and Things Fall Apart. In The Dragon's Village, the story is told from the point-of-view of the outsider. Ling-ling, although she is Chinese, is an outsider in the far-flung Gansu province. She was raised with middle-class values and in a setting that would be considered wholly luxurious to the peasants she lives with during the course of the novel. Things Fall Apart, however, is written from what would be the equivalent of the peasants' point-of-view in The Dragon's Village. In Achebe's novel, the day-to-day lives of the villagers occupy the first two parts of the novel, inculcating the readers into their social values and norms and positioning them as insiders and the white men who come later in the novel as the outsiders.

The other significant difference is our reaction to the fundamental changes occurring in each novel. Chen's point-of-view largely aligns the reader with the benefits of communism and the land reform. We are easily able to identify the inequities under the feudal landlord system and we accept the equity in the land reform. Because Ling-ling points out the difficulties of the peasants' lives despite their valiant attempts just to survive, we as Western readers are not immediately repelled by the idea of Communism as we have been trained traditionally to be. On the other hand, we are immediately repelled by the changes wrought

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tand exactly what they had to do or how to do it (Chen 49). Ling-ling's first public encounter with the villagers demonstrates the problems inherent in attempting to change a tradition that has lasted for centuries. "Fellow villagers," she addresses them, although both she and they know she is not a villager (Chen 77). "We have come to help you carry out the land reform. You toil on the land, day and night, all the year around, and yet you are dressed in rags and you are hungry. Why?" (Chen 77). Ling-ling is surprised that her words do not act like a spell and inflame the villagers souls. She expects them to answer her with slogans such as "Long live the land reform!" "Down with the feudal landowners!" But their disinterested response demonstrates their incapability of understanding what she is saying. It is not that they don't understand the words; they cannot grasp the concept. This is life as it has always been and as far as they are concerned as it always will be (Chen 77). The conversation between Malvolio Cheng and old Gao concerning the Guomindang government is symptomatic of the problems inherent in introducing modern cultural changes in provinces that are based on cultural structures that are centuries old. O
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1607
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)