The Curse Annotation

 A surreal story that blends rural spats and migrant worker into a very dark tale. What starts with a squabble over a missing chicken quickly becomes a matter of life and death. This gives a very interesting glimpse of relationships in the countryside.

            A Yi’s stories emphasizes neighbor squabbles and misunderstandings, even blaming one another even for very petty mistakes. This reflects the way of living for some people who would make a big fuss out of a very small mistake or misunderstanding. In the story, also because of the influence of pride, the disappearance of a chicken caused Zhong Yonglian and Wu Haiying to barter the lives of their son.

            This story even tackles one of the societal problems nowadays, which is the ‘crab mentality’ and which mentions the extent to which one person would do harm to the other because of envy and jealousy.

            Readers will find this story entertaining,  and tragic while in the end getting a feeling of contentment from the way the story ended. It also teaches that after all that happened, still the value of forgiveness dominates.

                        Yi, A. (2012). The Curse by A Yi translated by Julia Lovell. The Guardian. Retrieved October 15, 2014 from http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/apr/13/curse-a-yi-story-china