"Fenjin was baffled by his teacher, who looked ferocious and
muttered to himself mysteriously, and whose jaundiced face was covered with
dark puckers. For the first time Fenjin thought of Mr. Chiu as an ugly man" (11).
One of the
main ideas of “Saboteur” is that no one person is as important as they think
they are, nor can they have as big of an impact as they would like to think
they can. We would all like to believe that we can save the world with our own
two hands; that we are enough and all that is needed to make a difference. When
Mr. Chiu is first arrested, he has big plans to get himself out of the jail and
show the world what happened to him to make a difference and expose the
officers of their wrongdoings. He knows that what happened to him was wrong and
that he should do his best to make others aware of what happened to him so they
can prevent it from happening to themselves and begin making changes in their authority
figures. By the time that he is freed from the prison, his mindset is completely
different. He is vengeful, and all he can think about is getting back at those
who did him wrong. However, he does way more than get back at them, he takes
out his revenge on everyone around him and people who he does not even know. In
this way, Mr. Chiu is just as immoral as the officers who harassed him and his
wife and then arrested him on false charges. He no longer seemed to even care
about his wife, who he was so concerned about at first but then enjoyed his
time away from as he turned more and more inward. He began exerting less energy
thinking about others, such as his wife and other people who could end up in
the same situation as him, and more energy plotting how to escape his
situation. Once he was able to do so, his only focus was revenge. He could have
left the prison and went to the newspapers or news stations, spreading what he
now knew about the authorities they trusted, but he chose not to. Instead of
making a positive difference like he initially intended to once he was let out,
he used his little power to create a huge and harmful effect on society. In
this way, Mr. Chiu is indeed an ugly person.
After our discussion in class on Tuesday, I found myself looking a bit differently at the power that Mr. Chiu holds throughout the story. At first, I believed that he had the least power in the beginning of the story and the most by the end, when he was able to make such a big impact on his community. However, I find myself believing now that there is a difference between being powerful and having an impact. Mr. Chiu is still a weak man at the end of the story; in fact, even weaker because of his petty revenge scheme. I now think that he was the most powerful in the beginning of the story, when he had a good job and held power over his students, and lost that power as the story went on and he realized that he didn't have much of an impact on his community until his final actions.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting ideas. I think there's some slippage here in your use of "weakness," "power," and "impact." Perhaps the story suggests that almost everyone has power over someone else. The "weak" characters in the story use their power against undeserving people: the police beat and imprison Mr. Chiu, he gives hepatitis to 600 people. So the police and Chiu have power and certainly make an impact. But perhaps the "strongest" character in this sense is Fenjin, who stands up for Mr. Chiu and sees the ugliness of his revenge.
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