In the Wineshop – Sumi Paul

The story’s narrator is revisiting a place he once lived.  Explain the significance that this “revisiting” has in relation to the themes of the story.

In the story, the narrator comes back to the place where he once lived. He comes to realize that everything is different and he feels like a stranger. When he passed by his old school, he noticed the name had changed. He felt like everything was different as though he was in a place he no longer knew. He says “In less than two hours my enthusiasm had waned, and I rather reproached myself for coming.” He felt like he should not have come back because this place he once knew was nothing like how he left it. This theme of revisiting is significant because it shows how things are always changing in life and nothing is going to stay still. We have to keep up and adapt to these changes. I feel that this is important to learn for the narrator because he is going back to teaching confucianism, but when growing up he wanted to teach things that were to bring change to the way people learned. Instead of moving forward towards change, he goes backwards to the old ways. 

Describe an instance of filial piety in the story.  What is its significance?

An instance of filial piety was when he came to rebury his brother because his mother had told him to do so. However, this moment in the story was even more significant because when he went to the grave, he saw nothing there. There was no body and no remains of anything that would show a dead body was buried there. However, he still reburied an empty casket next to his father to keep his mother at peace. He says “As soon as my mother knew this, she became very upset, and couldn’t sleep for several nights—she can read letters by herself, you know. But what could I do? I had no money, no time: there was nothing that could be done.” He knew how upset his mother felt when she found out that her son’s grave was going to be swamped. Knowing he could do nothing else to make her happy, he took his opportunity to keep her at peace and rebury him. He did not really know his brother and even said that he has forgotten how he looks, which shows that rebutting his brother has no significance to him. He is only doing this because of his mother, which is why this is a significant example of filial piety in the story.