At first blush, I didn’t think much of the first line indention in Castro’s two-stanza poem, “I well know there is nothing,” nor did I linger on the length of the sentences afterwards. After reading this once, it’s a very easy read; it’s translated so well that I would have thought it was written within the last century or so. However, after further analysis, the structure of the two stanzas, as well as the way the words are arranged within the two stanzas, make me believe this poem is more than just a splurt of words on a piece of paper, a rant about a person’s feeling of meaninglessness–it’s a poem with a unique structure by a unique romantic poet.

I noticed in my second reading that no matter how the lines were rearranged, the poem still made sense. For instance:

I well know there is nothing
new under the sky,
forever the same.
that what I think of now
others have thought before.
Well, because we are so,
clocks that repeat
Well, why do I write?

I think the reason why this is so is because Castro is the kind of romantic poet whose work portrays spontaneity and what is natural, not what is orderly and strict. Castro is also a poet who prefers to keep things concise and visceral, which is made very obvious by this poem.

In addition, and this might be due to translation, the lines following the first indented line of each stanza inverts the other’s lines; so that line 2 of stanza one is the same length of the line 8 in stanza two, line 3 is the same length as line 7, and line 4 is the same length as line 6. This, along with line 7 (“clocks that repeat,”) made me think that this poem was a twisted reflection, like Anthony Burgess’ thoughts on mankind in his novel A Clockwork Orange. Then Castro was reflecting on more than just the meaninglessness she was feeling at the time.

The Story of the Stone is full of personal narratives, third person description of other’s stories, and conversations. These narratives, stories and conversations initiated the whole novel, introduced the main characters, and also allowed readers get to know the background and the relationships of the characters. The magical story of Jia BaoYu which is “at the moment of his birth he had a piece of beautiful, clear, colored jade in his mouth with a lot of writing on it” (535) was described by Zhen ZiXing during the conversation between Jia YuCun and Zhen ZiXing. Moreover, the novel is also mixed with poems and verses. These poems and verses help the readers understand the content better, some of the poems or verses are hints foreshadowing later developments in the story. “Pages full of idle words, Penned with hot and bitter tears” (526) this poem that the author used to describe The Story of the Stone tells the readers that this story is so distressing, full pf sadness. It set up the keystone of the whole story.

Speaking of symbolism, the author used a lot of it throughout the novel. The most important symbol in the first three chapters is the “stone”. The stone is a unique, magical used piece rock by the goddess. It became a “beautiful, clear, colored jade” (535) that came out from Jia BaoYu’s mouth. Jia BaoYu has same exact personalities like the stone. He is remarkable, extraordinary. He is someone special, and someone who doesn’t being seen so often in the society that BaoYu lives in. Besides, “Yu” means “jade” in Chinese. Actually, a lot of characters’ name has another meaning. For example, the last name “Jia” has the same pronunciation as the word “fake” and the last name “Zhen” has the same pronunciation as the word “real” in Chinese.  It is a pity that we can’t notice this easily because of the translation.

In traditional Chinese culture, women have much lower position than men in the society. On the contrary, Jia BaoYu has a completely different opinion regarding women. He thinks “girls are made of water and boys are made of mud” (535).  When he is with girls, he feels “flesh and clean”, but when he is with buys, he feels “stupid and nasty” (535). In his eyes, men and women is equal, and women should be respected as men. His thought challenges the traditional idea which is “men are superior to women”.

It would be great to live in one’s personal dream or fantasy, but that cannot happen. Instead, when the person wakes up from a dream or breaks out of a fantasy, the only things that awaits them is reality. In various parts of The Story of the Stone, the theme of the separation between what is true and what is false is repeatedly mentioned directly or inferred. Though some things are not easily identified to have connections with the theme, like the last names of the two male main characters, other things like the small characters inscribed on the arch have connections that are easier to be realized by the readers.

In Shiyin’s dream, he sees an arch with small characters inscribed on either side of it. The characters state “Truth becomes fiction when the fiction’s true; Real becomes not-real where the unreal’s real” (page 528). Later on in this chapter, it suddenly sinks in that the meaning of the small characters from his dream relates to Shiyin’s real life. Again, as though unreal becomes real, though Shiyin met the monk and the Taoist in a dream, he soon sees them approaching them when he was outside at the front of his house. The monk warns him to “beware the high feast of the fifteenth day”, which is the upcoming Mid-Autumn Festival (page 529). The truth that Shiyin is good in wealth and happily lives with his wife and daughter makes the warning of the monk seem like an unreal prophecy because the bad things haven’t happened. Assuming that the “unreal” prophecy made by an immortal is true, the characters inscribed on the arch should describe that all the Shiyin’s happiness disappears when the unbelievable situation of his family being devastated by a misfortune becomes real. In this case, it is as if the unreal overwrites the real, making what was real now false.

The last names of the two main characters also have a role in assisting the portrayal of the theme. It wasn’t really easy to realize at first that in Chinese, “Zhen” and “Jia” mean “real” and “fake” respectively. Despite the total contrast of the meaning of their last names, these two characters coincidentally also have different social statuses. Zhen Shiyin is happily wed and supplied Yucun with money to the capital, Jia Yucun is a poor scholar that keeps himself alive by being a copyist. As if that was the end of the contrast between these two characters, they also become opposites by the end of chapter one. Shiyin becomes devestated according to the monk’s predictions and Yucun becomes less as poor when he returns to a near-by village. However, it is later revealed in chapter three that despite their outward appearance as being rich, Jia Yucun’s family members are having financial and family problems. Due to the false outward appearance of being wealthy, it relates back to the last name of “Jia” meaning fake. The author, Cao Xueqin seems to not have only portrayed contrast between truth and false directly, but he also uses “Zhen” Shiyin and “Jia” Yucun as a method to contrast truth and false in human form.

Brian Tang