it is impossible to be a good person and live in a capitalistic system. in such a capitalistic economy, the typical stereotype of the most successful people is that they are mean and cheat people out of things to get what they want. it is basically an "every man for himself" dilemma. in this book, Shen Teh is said to be a very "good" person. She proves this over and over again with her kind gestures of providing not so good people food, money, and shelter with nothing in return. everyone of the town takes advantage of Shen Teh and she finds herself in many tough situations because she is afraid to turn down people's wants. one of my favorite lines in this book comes from almost the very beginning on page 11 when the first god says to Shen Teh, "hesitations do not count if you overcome them." i think that in most of her situations, Shen Teh hesitated on her decisions to help the people. many times she hesitated and it would have gone in her favor to turn the other way but because of her good nature, she would rather have the other people be happy rather than herself.
the mix between helping people before yourself and counting on other people to succeed does not go together. Shen Teh is a perfect example of this. She relied on Shui Ta (her cousin) to take away all of the bad situations that were happening to her. Shui Ta started to help in the beginning for a while but in the end, it was Shui Ta that also ruins Shen Teh's life once again.
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it is interesting how you brought up the line "hesitations do not count if you overcome them." , because that's one of the line i underline and it has made me think.
ReplyDeletei actually agree with you that it is impossible to survive in a capitalistic system, most people take advantage of the good and innocent people, i think its great how you brought up the point that Shen Teh hesitate before helping people, i think we all have the mix feeling of helping people, we want to help others but at the same time we want to know if it hurts our way to success.
These arguments all represent the point of a good person in a capitalistic society very well. It simply cannot be done. Although the sad thing is we all wish it could be done, it simply is impossible to be a good person living in a capitalistic society. If one were to think about putting ourselves in the shoes of Shen Teh we would have to seriously consider which is more important; the well being of others, or the well being of ourselves. Shen Teh chose to care more about the well being of others, which as we learned in the story did not work out to well because she often times could not find herself coming out ahead. Therefore I would draw to the conclusion that people tend to fend for themselves instead of worrying about others. So, when a good person comes along often times they get taken advantage of.
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