Critical Review | A single story in Saboteur (1996)
Saboteur (1996) is a short story written by Ha Jin and published in 1996. Ha Jin joined the People’s Liberation Army during the Cultural Revolution in 1969. In 1981, he graduated from Heilongjiang University with a Bachelor's degree in English studies, and he obtained his master's in Anglo-American literature three years later. He was under a scholarship at Brandeis University, the United Stated, when the Tiananmen incident broke out and because of that, he remained in the United States after his Ph.D. in 1992 as he published his first book of poems, Between Silences (1990). He wrote many stories and novels in China and he won the National Book Award for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award for his novel, Waiting that published in 1999.
Saboteur takes place immediately after the end of the Chinese Cultural Revolution and revolves around the main character Mr. Chiu, a professor at the university in Harbin who was just recovered from hepatitis. He was falsely accused of a crime he did not commit. Throughout this story, we can see how Mr. Chiu struggles to prove he is innocent. He was mentally and physically tortured by the Chinese police because they denied and ignored his pleas to treat his condition. Until he saw the innocent lawyer that was sent by the university get tortured too. He snapped and decided to turn the table by going around spread his disease to other innocent people.
This story was written to criticize the corrupted government. Saboteur showed the parallel of the contemporary world which is full of injustices and mistreatments especially by the police force as well the judicial systems that are full of corruption. However, this story is written from the author's perspective, on how he viewed the Chinese Communist Party in that period. Even if we do not know the truth behind this story, I believe this is how Ha Jin views and sees corrupted government. Hence, in this essay, I will identify the issue that the writer wants to convey in the story and how he conveys it in his short story as well as the type of theory that he used in explaining the issue.
Every writer has their own ways to address issues when they write a story. As every issue that conveys in the story should deliver something to the readers. The importance of understanding the issue from a story is not how the writer delivered the issue. However, it is how we understand the message and start to view something more than just from the external understanding but deeper than that. It is interesting how Saboteur (1996) was written. When I first read this story, I originally thought the issue of this story is just simply about corruption. Therefore, this story is not just about the corrupted police but this story criticized human behavior which is selfish and close-minded.
Saboteur is an act of destructing order, especially in political and military advantages. Ha Jin used the word saboteur as a symbol in this short story. In this short story, the word saboteur is addressed from two different perspectives. First, the authority is the Chinese police who sabotage the main character by saying he is destructing the police order and accusing him of false allegations. Second, the main character wanted to get revenge on the Chinese police but sabotages other innocent people just to represent the police organization for lack of empathy and cruelty as human beings. The title is significant as it illustrated the concept of sabotage in numerous coursed of action.
Furthermore, Ha Jin mastered the element of irony to convey the message behind the issue. The major theme convened in Saboteur employed using irony as there are a lot of unexpected contrary elements in this short story. Ha Jin used the Chinese Cultural Revolution as a setting to describe the situation of what was supposed to happen after the revolution: the idealism of equality among the civilians abused by authority as something that happened in a lot of countries in this world.
He used situational irony to represent the negative attitudes humans have toward other human beings. situational irony is defined as something; all around us—from humorous news headlines to the shock twists in a book or TV show, as it is how we should view the expectation and reality (Atwood, 2020). According to Dunham (2019), situational irony is a very straightforward concept, and the tricky part is how it is illustrated effectively in the short story. It demonstrates one thing that is the opposite of what we expect. Therefore, situational irony is so pervasive and essential to this story that it rises to the level of the theme (Sexton, n.d.).
In this story, Ha Jin’s criticism was only of the corrupted police, but he was trying to emphasize how such attitudes affect other people. By going through the story, the situational irony was constructed by the plot that says the main character was falsely accused of destructing public order and he was taken to the police station for further investigation. He was forced to sign a confession for false allegations. From this, we could see how Ha Jin uses situational irony to emphasize the selfishness of humans toward other human beings. Ha Jin was not just trying to say the bad side of people tends to be selfish because of the lack of consideration for other people just to achieve their own personal profit or pleasure. But he also trying to convey that not everything about selfishness is bad, there is some good thing about being selfish for certain things that are necessary.
By going through the story, Ha Jin constructed the plot by saying the police officer purposely threw the tea at Mr. Chiu but there is no explanation about the reason for the police officer doing that to them. In the story, Mr. Chiu’s character started as someone innocent who minds his own business. In some way, from here we could see that he has lost some reasons that can make us, the readers believe and understand the issue that he wanted to convey in this story. This is an opportunity for readers to argue and question the message of this story as it led to confusion, which is concerned about whether this story is really about the selfish people or it is just how the author viewed people in that period of time.
What is more, as I read this story, I found that the author also wanted to try to make readers understand that being selfish can also change something. To further understand this, I will explain my interpretation of the ending of this story. After he was set free, Mr. Chiu and Fenji went on eating from one restaurant to another towards the end there are 800 people affected and 6 people died due to the outbreak of the disease. To be more precise, through this ending Ha Jin wanted to address two things. First is how the selfishness of the Chinese police in blaming Mr. Chiu for the crime he did not commit so that they can be seen as good authority.
The second is how the selfishness of the effect on the outbreak of disease can change something on how the Chinese police do their work in the further. In the end, he did not this selfishness of Mr. Chiu going around killing innocent people could change the way the Chinese police organization does their work.
In addition, as stated previously this story also brings the issue of close-minded people. This issue was emphasized through how Mr. Chiu viewed his junior from university. He expected someone that has more experience in handling such cases, but the university send someone who held no official position and that fact makes him anxious about the possibility he can get out of jail. This particularly awakes the perspectives of the readers on the fact that Mr.
Chiu is a close-minded person. I personally agreed with how Ha Jin addressed this in this short story. He wrote Mr. Chiu’s character to emphasize being a close-minded person who judges someone based on their position and work. Although, Fiji barely does any work to set Mr. Chiu free as it is Mr. Chiu’s choice on agreeing to the Chinese police agreement to set him is for him to sign a confession of false allegation towards the Chinese police. Therefore, despite that fact he barely gained experience in his field. Fenji did his job by coming to the jail to deal with the Chinese police. From here, I personally agree on how this situational irony has emphasized the issue subtly and as a reader, I understand the reason behind that. In which he wanted to highlight that making assumptions about something that we never know about or see its impact on society will not bring any good to any party.
To further discuss this short story, I want to demonstrate one theory that can be related to the author’s perspectives. The danger of “a single story”. “A single story” is a theory told by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a young Nigerian author during her speech on TED Talk back in 2009. In her TED Talk speech, she proposed the idea of the power of stories, is a danger. She described the danger as only knowing one story about a group, which the single-story could create stereotypes and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, they are incomplete as they make one story become the only story (Brown, 2013).
She believes that the story matter but we all unconsciously are too often understand the perspective are hearing and knowing a single story based on what, who, or where; about a person, a situation, or perhaps a conflict. But forget that the risk of the single story is the one perspective, which can lead us to make assumptions, conclusions, and decisions that may be incomplete as Adichie claimed. Believing and understanding the context of a single story will prevent us from being more complex in view of a situation.
It is interesting how the single story is a way of viewing and interacting with a text or the world rather than a set of beliefs. As stated previously in the conceptual understanding, whether this story is Ha Jin’s view towards the corrupted government or this is how he views people in general. However, I will discuss this theory in the essay as to how I understand and view Ha Jin’s perspective in this story. The central idea of Adichie’s theory: understanding a situation based on one story will prevent us from being more complex in viewing a situation. Which Saboteur is indeed a single story.
Readers might see this story addressed the issue of corruption based on the setting of the story. However, as one of the readers, I could not avoid but feel the need to understand whether this story is coming from a single story (of the author) or it is comprehensive of his perspectives. Because not many people from every part of the world know what was going on that this period of time in China, so the injustice Mr. Chiu experienced also creates a single story of what the Chinese police force seemed to be like back then.
As a reader, I understand this story from the perspective of an open-minded person. It is because through this story I interpreted Ha Jin’s perspectives from different aspects. Externally, other readers will view this story as a story that criticized the corrupted police that happened in that period. However, I, as a researcher that doing research on understanding the concept of this story. I viewed this story issued something else, which I mentioned early: the effect of selfishness and close-minded people toward other people.
In addition, I agree with Adichie that a single story is dangerous because if reading from this story we only get the point of view from Mr. Chiu and no point of view of the Chinese people. Which, the readers also will get the same point of view as Mr. Chiu on how they should view the Chinese police and vice versa. This point summed up that we as humans easily stereotype, judge, and make a conclusion from a single story that we are not in that position to tell. That too brings the conclusion on the issues of selfishness and close-minded people that I mentioned earlier.
Furthermore, it is undeniable that Saboteur is a great story in addressing the issue of corrupted government. By using such an effect of irony, Ha Jin manages to deliver a powerful message to the readers. Nevertheless, the issue in this short story has attracted many comments on how this short story is beautifully portrayed. There are comments on the Goodread page that praised Ha Jin for his writing in Saboteur. Cunningham (2019) commented on Saboteur says that this story is short, but it is overall oppression of the society, snappy action happened quick, thus letting the plot move and hit fairly well: the ending has concluded the story with a punch. Despite that, Gainey (2019) through her comment says that this short story same like Sweat written by Zora Neale Hurston produces a sense of anger towards a certain character, and ends with a questionable choice of action by the protagonist. It is clear that Saboteur manages to deliver the same message that every reader will get the abuse of power by authority.
However, there is always a good and bad perspective on everything same as Saboteur. Marlaina (2019) argues that this short story does not extract the concept of innocents or collateral damage because Mr. Chiu poisoning all of the town shows that he wanted to get revenge when the specific people who harmed him were out of reach. Her perspectives on how everyone claims that this short story started innocent and the ending highlighted that the innocent people died but there is no sign of the Chinese police that sabotage him. I assumed from Marlaina’s perspective, that she did view this story the same way as other readers. However, she highlighted the concept of innocents or collateral damage in her comment which brings the meaning she agreed with Adichie’s theory of “a single story.”
To conclude this essay, Saboteur written by Ha Jin is a great story that mastered situational irony to convey the message of the effects of selfishness and close-minded towards other people which reflects on the main issue in this short story. We as a human, should take these issues closely and understand them critically so that we can avoid harming other people. We also need to understand the concept of common sense and empathy as these two are related to how to shape our mind and heart in viewing something. By practicing common sense and having empathy, we can accept other perspectives and will stop being judgemental towards people. From Ha Jin’s writing in this story, I learned that he viewed situations and make issues critically from that as he delivered them in his stories and he let go of everything to the readers to decide which interpretation he want to convey in his stories. This is also applicable in Saboteur.