Kuang's Dilemma

 

So, I was queried in the comments (Hi Paul W) to the effect that using a header like 'Something Kuang got right' implies there are other things she got wrong. It seems like my response to that is better treated in a post of its own (hence this) than in a comment.  --John R.

  

re. 'Something Kuang Got Right'

It wd be more fair to say I disagree with her than that she got it wrong.

 

A key fulcrum in the book is the hero's dilemma: if you find yourself part of a repressive regime, one that you've come to feel is a force for evil in the world --such as the British Empire during the Opium War of the 1830s, is it 

 

(1) better to stay in the organization and work to change it from within

 

or

 

(2) rebel against the group, acknowledging "the necessity of violence".

 

In Kuang's book the hero vacillates between these two poles for the first half of the book before committing himself absolutely to one of these options  throughout the second half.

 

A secondary point I wd have expected her to make more of was the issue of collateral damage, but it's a relatively minor concern.

 

 

As a pacifist, I'm not sympathetic to "the necessity of evil".  I think violence shd not be our starting point but our last resort. Hence I struggled with this book.

 

--John R. 

--current reading: THE ROOK