What first hit me was the contrast between "big" and "small".
The story's title (一件小事) could be translated as "a small matter". It is contrasted with (所谓国家大事) "the so-called great affairs of state".
Then there is the north wind, which is alternately described as "great" and "small" as it waxes and wanes.
Finally, there is the way the rickshaw man grows in stature and the description of the "small" -- the word is in quotes in the Chinese -- being squeezed out of the narrator.
On closer reading, I became aware of how the narrator's mental states. The great matters, over which he had little control, caused him aggravation. The small matter, which was in his own hands, gave him cause for hope.
While Lu Xu's vision is typically dark, the narrator's willingness to learn from his shame is a welcome spark.
I really appreciate this choice for this story because it strikes a personal chord with me as a Chinese American writer currently studying/reflecting on classical/foundational texts from both East and West. For me, I am immediately brought back to a political consciousness of the high stakes of any literary endeavor in China, where a court system reliant on a divine emperor (and run by a powerful censorship machine) ruled much of the imagination even in Lu Xun’s days. There’s something about the voice in the beginning that waxes an aloof lament of all things to do with the state, and it’s a powerful contrast for him to say that out of all of the affairs of the state/court (which are famously ripe with corruption) this one minor incident sticks out to him. Though he is aware of himself as being a person of status/power, it is rendered utterly impotent when he cannot compel the rickshaw man to ignore the woman and go on with his day. I feel a bit of that glimpse of humanity in the way the rickshaw man grows larger in the distance, signifying that he realizes he’s been egotistical and petty. I’m reminded of a different scene just for counterpoint’s sake, in Dicken’s “A Tale of Two Cities” when the heartless Marquis in a huff runs over a boy in his carriage and just tosses a few gold coins (and the bloody revolution follows!). In my mind I see two authors from opposing sides of the world yet writing to such similar themes.
I listened to the audio and read along the first time. The second time around, several hours later (last night), I read the story aloud. I had no idea what was going on in China in 1920 nor did I know what was happening in 1917 so there was a lot of Googling. This was easy and convenient because I am either working at my laptop or with my phone. I typed notes on a Google Doc for the same reason.
My Google searches from yesterday:
Republic of China
What was happening in China 1920s
China 1920s rickshaw
China 1917 winter
I learned about the May Fourth Movement, I learned about how China was the epicenter of the 1918 flu pandemic and “The Surprisingly Important Role China Played in WWI.” I was thinking about symbolism and communism and student protests and “Is that George Saunders reading the audio?” and “the narrator has a fur gown” and “is my visualization of a rickshaw accurate?” and “how old was Lu Xun when he wrote this?”
Many years ago, my grandma had a bad fall. She fell in the middle of the street on her way back from the grocery store. Her face was bleeding and I don’t know whether anyone helped her up or she got up herself. When the older woman falls and the rickshaw driver helps her–that is when I feel the most emotion. It’s the image of her falling–and the thought of someone helping her. I suppose it’s because I miss my grandma and know that she never owned any fur-lined gowns. She never owned a car and had to walk to Big Ben Market to buy bananitos and lemon drops. She walked to Saint Mary. She walked to Chan Dong Supermarket. The circulation in her legs got so bad that eventually both of her legs were amputated and she never walked again.
She lived through these times, a couple thousand miles south of Beijing. She survived the Spanish flu and the world wars. She was five years old when Lu Xun wrote An Incident.
What started as a lesson in Chinese history turned into a 42-year-old woman thinking of her Nanay, wishing she had held her hand more when they crossed the street together.
An Incident cuts deep. Lu Hsun has deployed his pen as a surgeon’s scalpel and conducted a swift, forensic autopsy of a sick society. Seeing the body politic splayed on his slab, its classist, corrupt malignancy exposed, satisfied me greatly. But Lu Hsun wasn’t done. He wrote on to a powerful finale: Hope. It felled me, stirred in me the mix of shame and gratitude a sinner feels when being forgiven. Ashamed of my smug reactions when the story’s narrator was made small, when his bribery failed to assuage his guilt, my outlook which had favored the lowly rickshaw man and the old woman shifted to him. I saw myself, like him, in need of reforming, and felt grateful for the optimism Lu Hsun leaves him. Maybe there is hope for me, too?
How did his story work on me the way it did? With wind. The agency of wind propels his story.
In the Chinese tradition, wind is associated with sickness. A wise man avoids wind. But both the narrator of some rank and the rickshaw man must work. Work forces them out into the wind. An ill wind in the Chinese tradition and, like Hemingway’s rain in Cat in Rain, striking everyone irrespective of his rank. No one escapes the wind. It causes the incident. An accident easily foreseen. As Chinese classics admonish: What did you expect, going out in the wind?
The rickshaw man responds to the incident with action, aiding the wind’s victim without regard for himself. His selfless act of goodwill—at odds with classists, the corrupt state, and the self-serving narrator—sets the wind in a modern context. A new iteration of the wind appears. Fantastic and transformational.
No longer a malevolent force, the wind becomes an agent of reform causing the narrator to see the rickshaw man inflated and himself small, deflated. He senses his failings, though he cannot face up to them. Thus, his reform begins but remains incomplete. The incident stays with him. From time to time its wind returns to revive his sense of something wrong within him, which he remains unable to face. Yet, the reoccurring wind conveys courage and hope for self-reform.
A hundred years have slipped by since Lu Hsun chose to end his story with hope. Now, ill winds abound. Yet, his powerful word continues to blow off the page and provoke a new reader. A day later, An Incident returns to her mind and she feels hopeful. Thank you, Master Lu Hsun.
Twenty years ago, I was running an errand for my boss in midtown, NYC. As I came out from dropping off the package, I noticed actor Christian Slater leaning against the building. As I waited at the corner for the light to change, I took another look over my shoulder to take him in. Just then, a taxi turning a tight left ran over my foot and knocked me down. The other people waiting to cross pounded on the side of the car and it stopped. The taxi driver told me to get in. There was a businessman inside already, reading a newspaper. He looked up, annoyed, but didn't say anything. As we drove away, I checked for Christian Slater but he was gone.
The taxi driver dropped off the businessman and then brought me to my workplace. I tied my sneaker tighter because it seemed to help the pain and went on with my work day. About a week later, I got a phone call from the taxi driver, checking to make sure I was okay.
Reading this story, I wonder now if that businessman ever thinks about that day? Does Christian Slater?
I find it very interesting that so far maybe half of the commenters think that the narrator experienced a change of heart; the other half do not. Possibly one mark of good writing is that the story can be experienced in opposing manners. And possibly both takes are not only valid, but true.
I don’t read this as the narrator having a real change of heart. Instead, the story strikes me as a subtle skewering of the way comfortable people can self-romanticize. And of how the narrator spins a pious arc of personal reform, while remaining oblivious to "actual life."
The narrator's self-involvement is constant throughout the entire story, starting with the wind being described in terms of how it makes it hard to get a rickshaw. As the driver walks the woman away, the narrator doesn't think of what the driver or the woman are actually feeling or doing. All his emotion and intense imagery is spent on his own reactions. Even when he hands coins to the policeman, the narrator doesn’t think about how the driver is doing, and whether he's been arrested, or what exactly has happened to him. Instead, he obsesses over his own actions in giving the coins.
His mention, at the beginning and the end, of “affairs of state,” or “military and political affairs” seems important. I wonder if these references are there as a way of drawing attention to the narrator’s narcissism. In the beginning, he describes the affairs of state only in terms of the impression they make on HIM. Not on the effects they have on the populace at large. At the end, again, these public matters are dismissed as unimportant, irrelevant to him. Is the story leading us to consider the situation of a man who views the vulnerability, suffering, compassion, self-sacrifice of other people -- of a whole nation, even -- only in terms of how those "incidents" play into his own private drama?
Another thing occurs twice in this very short story: “I was almost afraid to turn my thoughts on myself.” But his thoughts have been on himself the whole entire time. And “makes me try to think about myself.” Again, that’s all he’s been doing! The juxtaposition of his self-thoughts in the final paragraph with his continued disinterest in the larger affairs of society seems important. His self-satisfaction ends the story. He sees himself as having nobly -- even humbly -- passed through shame, and now being on an upward trajectory of reform, newly endowed with courage. His own personal drama is “more vivid” than what he sort of dismisses as “actual life.” Which the actual people around him are actually living.
Jan 22, 2022·edited Jan 22, 2022Liked by George Saunders
There is this Buddhist sutra I love...its a sort of Marvel superhero story of intergalactic wisdom and compassion filled with some funny scenes where stodgy old monks are having their minds blown, by this one charming dharma scallawag and his wacky friends. It’s called the Vimalakirti Sutra and at one time it probably would have been the most popular Buddhist text in China (my impression...not an expert.) Dunno if it would have fallen out of favor by the 20s.
Anyway, there is this repeated motif in there of average people transforming to become big and also being small at the same time. After one of these transformations, our hero Vimalakirti explains to one of the historic Buddha’s disciples what that monk, Shariputra, is missing:
Vimalakirti said, "Ah, Shariputra, the Buddhas and bodhisattvas have an emancipation that is called Beyond Comprehension. When a bodhisattva dwells in this emancipation, he can take something as tall and broad as Mount Sumeru and put it inside a mustard seed without enlarging one or shrinking the other, and Mount Sumeru, king of mountains, will still have its original shape. Moreover, the Four Heavenly Kings and the gods of the Trayastrimsha heaven [who live on Mount Sumeru] will not even know or realize where they have gone to. Only those destined for enlightenment will be able to see that Sumeru has been put inside a mustard seed. This is called dwelling in the doctrine of the emancipation Beyond Comprehension.
That’s what I thought about when the driver walked away from the rickshaw.
So much of the action of the story is driven by the changes in the wind. First, the heavy wind clears the loose dust off the roadway. Then the wind lets up a little. The combination of high wind (clears away dust) and low wind (less resistance on the road) allows the rickshaw to speed up, and hit the woman. It's implied that the rickshaw might not have hit her at all if not for her loose ragged clothing, "fluttering in the wind" and becoming entangled on the shaft.
The wind is "responsible" for much of what happens in the story, rising and falling in an almost pernicious way to create the circumstances for "the incident."
The narrator tells us from the start that "so-called affairs of state' led him to think badly about humanity thus hardening his heart. He then tells us of this incident that "woke" him up.
What "woke" him up had nothing to do with "affairs of state." Quite the contrary. It was the state of human grace demonstrated by a person far below consideration in military and political affairs. In that act the rickshaw driver became the powerful one. The one who could make a difference in the life of another person.
This made him feel little, insignificant, drained of self-importance. Impotent. When approached by the police officer, the only thing he had that could restore his sense of worth was money. He was disquieted by this insignificant act.
And he continued to be distressed as he relives this incident. His involvement in affairs of state, his education, his wealth touched no one but himself. Yet it gives him "fresh courage and hope." To do what? To change. To learn to open his heart. Again... and again... and again....
I’ve re-read An Incident several times, dissected it, puzzled over it. I've little to add to all the insightful comments and I'm anxious to hear what George has to say. That said, I woke up this morning and it triggered a memory of mine, one that is associated with strong waves of emotion.
The story got me thinking about my dear sister. Beautiful, creative, sensitive, anorexic, alcoholic, homeless, then dead. My feelings seeing her (and remembering seeing her, years later) in her element, the street, from my elevated perch. The mix of feelings any of us feel when encountering a homeless person, maybe inebriated, unavoidably dirty, perhaps threatening. Their wounds seem self inflected, and any help provided will likely be turned into mind-numbing drugs or alcohol. On the other hand, they are a living breathing person, it could be a relative, it could be you in their position, there but for chance. You feel waves of empathy and waves of disgust. Fleeting, competing feelings. Which feeling dominates? Well, I suppose it depends.
Holding my take on the story, but FWIW thought I'd share this John Steinbeck quote, which just popped up in my Twitter feed (via Jon Winokur):
"If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another. The formula seems to lie solely in the aching urge of the writer to convey something he feels important to the reader. If the writer has that urge, he may sometimes, but by no means always, find the way to do it. You must perceive the excellence that makes a good story good or the errors that make a bad story. For a bad story is only an ineffective story."
The first time I read this story, i read it in my usual way, which is to just read through, fairly quickly, getting the gist of the plot and leaving it at that. With this story, I did the same, but since George asked that we focus on what we were feeling, I was aware of feeling a kind of hurt, a pain. I was worried from the start—I think I’m worried at the start of every story. And then my worry increased because an old woman had fallen and now the kind rickshaw man is going to perhaps get in trouble for helping her. Those were my main emotions. When the story ended with a note of hope, I felt a bit cheated. It seemed a quick kind of ending, without enough explanation.
Then I read the story again, only this time I did as George had taught us to do with Cat in the Rain. I read each sentence, thought about what it was doing there, and then read the next sentence and thought about how the writer had purposely written it to follow the previous one. I thought about how every word in the story had been chosen for a reason. And I found myself paying close, close attention to every single nuance. It was amazing how the story opened up to me. A story that had meant almost nothing to me on first reading, was suddenly a beautiful thing, overflowing with compassion and wonder and beauty and hope and—at the same time—hopelessness. I found so much meaning in this ‘incident,’ which was both the inciting incident of the story as well as the inciting incident of the main character’s life.
George has asked for specifics. I will offer one here, though I wrote down many. For much of the story, the main character has thoughts. He has no problem thinking. He’s got opinions and we hear them. But then—suddenly, he cannot think. Even at the end of the story, long after the incident, he can’t really think, though he tries to think about himself. And this is such an amazing aspect of the story. The incident haunts him, even more than the politics of his era. He can’t quite grasp it, but he recognizes within the rickshaw driver’s actions something buried deep inside of himself—so deep, that he reaches for coins without knowing why. Somewhere deep inside his humanity lurks, but he can’t access that. His life has been too tamped down by the situation where he lives. The politics of his time and place. A people who are not allowed to think for themselves.
I’ll probably write more later, but all I’ve got is my iPad at the moment without ability to switch between screens.
When I was five, we went to a garage sale in Birmingham, Alabama, and there, between a duct taped La-Z-Boy and a lidless blender, was a rickshaw. It stood out like some exotic gem and was for sale for thirty dollars. My parents agreed (to our surprise) to buy it for us kids. It was bright yellow with red scrollwork, and one of the two wheels was off-kilter, like an old grocery cart.
Whenever I read about rickshaws, in my head they're all yellow with red scrollwork and wobble a bit. In this story, I pictured everything as black, white, and gray, except for the bright yellow rickshaw, colored by my memory. The narrator mentions that the memory he recounted is "more vivid than in actual life", as I suspect that of my rickshaw may be. We broke the rickshaw in under a week, to my parents' dismay. That had been a lot of money for them. Are regret and guilt such strong emotions that they produce some of our most vivid memories?
This is probably not what you're looking for, but it is all I can think about after reading the story twice. And I mean ALL I can think about is that damn yellow rickshaw, looming large like the retreating driver. I just emailed my dad to retroactively thank him for buying it for us.
No rush to comment on the story - take your time with this one.
I read the story in Chinese (http://www.millionbook.com/mj/l/luxun/lh/001.htm).
What first hit me was the contrast between "big" and "small".
The story's title (一件小事) could be translated as "a small matter". It is contrasted with (所谓国家大事) "the so-called great affairs of state".
Then there is the north wind, which is alternately described as "great" and "small" as it waxes and wanes.
Finally, there is the way the rickshaw man grows in stature and the description of the "small" -- the word is in quotes in the Chinese -- being squeezed out of the narrator.
On closer reading, I became aware of how the narrator's mental states. The great matters, over which he had little control, caused him aggravation. The small matter, which was in his own hands, gave him cause for hope.
While Lu Xu's vision is typically dark, the narrator's willingness to learn from his shame is a welcome spark.
I really appreciate this choice for this story because it strikes a personal chord with me as a Chinese American writer currently studying/reflecting on classical/foundational texts from both East and West. For me, I am immediately brought back to a political consciousness of the high stakes of any literary endeavor in China, where a court system reliant on a divine emperor (and run by a powerful censorship machine) ruled much of the imagination even in Lu Xun’s days. There’s something about the voice in the beginning that waxes an aloof lament of all things to do with the state, and it’s a powerful contrast for him to say that out of all of the affairs of the state/court (which are famously ripe with corruption) this one minor incident sticks out to him. Though he is aware of himself as being a person of status/power, it is rendered utterly impotent when he cannot compel the rickshaw man to ignore the woman and go on with his day. I feel a bit of that glimpse of humanity in the way the rickshaw man grows larger in the distance, signifying that he realizes he’s been egotistical and petty. I’m reminded of a different scene just for counterpoint’s sake, in Dicken’s “A Tale of Two Cities” when the heartless Marquis in a huff runs over a boy in his carriage and just tosses a few gold coins (and the bloody revolution follows!). In my mind I see two authors from opposing sides of the world yet writing to such similar themes.
I listened to the audio and read along the first time. The second time around, several hours later (last night), I read the story aloud. I had no idea what was going on in China in 1920 nor did I know what was happening in 1917 so there was a lot of Googling. This was easy and convenient because I am either working at my laptop or with my phone. I typed notes on a Google Doc for the same reason.
My Google searches from yesterday:
Republic of China
What was happening in China 1920s
China 1920s rickshaw
China 1917 winter
I learned about the May Fourth Movement, I learned about how China was the epicenter of the 1918 flu pandemic and “The Surprisingly Important Role China Played in WWI.” I was thinking about symbolism and communism and student protests and “Is that George Saunders reading the audio?” and “the narrator has a fur gown” and “is my visualization of a rickshaw accurate?” and “how old was Lu Xun when he wrote this?”
Many years ago, my grandma had a bad fall. She fell in the middle of the street on her way back from the grocery store. Her face was bleeding and I don’t know whether anyone helped her up or she got up herself. When the older woman falls and the rickshaw driver helps her–that is when I feel the most emotion. It’s the image of her falling–and the thought of someone helping her. I suppose it’s because I miss my grandma and know that she never owned any fur-lined gowns. She never owned a car and had to walk to Big Ben Market to buy bananitos and lemon drops. She walked to Saint Mary. She walked to Chan Dong Supermarket. The circulation in her legs got so bad that eventually both of her legs were amputated and she never walked again.
She lived through these times, a couple thousand miles south of Beijing. She survived the Spanish flu and the world wars. She was five years old when Lu Xun wrote An Incident.
What started as a lesson in Chinese history turned into a 42-year-old woman thinking of her Nanay, wishing she had held her hand more when they crossed the street together.
I’m not crying, George! You are!
An Incident cuts deep. Lu Hsun has deployed his pen as a surgeon’s scalpel and conducted a swift, forensic autopsy of a sick society. Seeing the body politic splayed on his slab, its classist, corrupt malignancy exposed, satisfied me greatly. But Lu Hsun wasn’t done. He wrote on to a powerful finale: Hope. It felled me, stirred in me the mix of shame and gratitude a sinner feels when being forgiven. Ashamed of my smug reactions when the story’s narrator was made small, when his bribery failed to assuage his guilt, my outlook which had favored the lowly rickshaw man and the old woman shifted to him. I saw myself, like him, in need of reforming, and felt grateful for the optimism Lu Hsun leaves him. Maybe there is hope for me, too?
How did his story work on me the way it did? With wind. The agency of wind propels his story.
In the Chinese tradition, wind is associated with sickness. A wise man avoids wind. But both the narrator of some rank and the rickshaw man must work. Work forces them out into the wind. An ill wind in the Chinese tradition and, like Hemingway’s rain in Cat in Rain, striking everyone irrespective of his rank. No one escapes the wind. It causes the incident. An accident easily foreseen. As Chinese classics admonish: What did you expect, going out in the wind?
The rickshaw man responds to the incident with action, aiding the wind’s victim without regard for himself. His selfless act of goodwill—at odds with classists, the corrupt state, and the self-serving narrator—sets the wind in a modern context. A new iteration of the wind appears. Fantastic and transformational.
No longer a malevolent force, the wind becomes an agent of reform causing the narrator to see the rickshaw man inflated and himself small, deflated. He senses his failings, though he cannot face up to them. Thus, his reform begins but remains incomplete. The incident stays with him. From time to time its wind returns to revive his sense of something wrong within him, which he remains unable to face. Yet, the reoccurring wind conveys courage and hope for self-reform.
A hundred years have slipped by since Lu Hsun chose to end his story with hope. Now, ill winds abound. Yet, his powerful word continues to blow off the page and provoke a new reader. A day later, An Incident returns to her mind and she feels hopeful. Thank you, Master Lu Hsun.
Twenty years ago, I was running an errand for my boss in midtown, NYC. As I came out from dropping off the package, I noticed actor Christian Slater leaning against the building. As I waited at the corner for the light to change, I took another look over my shoulder to take him in. Just then, a taxi turning a tight left ran over my foot and knocked me down. The other people waiting to cross pounded on the side of the car and it stopped. The taxi driver told me to get in. There was a businessman inside already, reading a newspaper. He looked up, annoyed, but didn't say anything. As we drove away, I checked for Christian Slater but he was gone.
The taxi driver dropped off the businessman and then brought me to my workplace. I tied my sneaker tighter because it seemed to help the pain and went on with my work day. About a week later, I got a phone call from the taxi driver, checking to make sure I was okay.
Reading this story, I wonder now if that businessman ever thinks about that day? Does Christian Slater?
I find it very interesting that so far maybe half of the commenters think that the narrator experienced a change of heart; the other half do not. Possibly one mark of good writing is that the story can be experienced in opposing manners. And possibly both takes are not only valid, but true.
Just heard (!) on the radio a host relating a George Saunders quote (!) which is this:
"What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness."
The very theme of An incident by Lu Hsun, seems to me.
Amen.
I don’t read this as the narrator having a real change of heart. Instead, the story strikes me as a subtle skewering of the way comfortable people can self-romanticize. And of how the narrator spins a pious arc of personal reform, while remaining oblivious to "actual life."
The narrator's self-involvement is constant throughout the entire story, starting with the wind being described in terms of how it makes it hard to get a rickshaw. As the driver walks the woman away, the narrator doesn't think of what the driver or the woman are actually feeling or doing. All his emotion and intense imagery is spent on his own reactions. Even when he hands coins to the policeman, the narrator doesn’t think about how the driver is doing, and whether he's been arrested, or what exactly has happened to him. Instead, he obsesses over his own actions in giving the coins.
His mention, at the beginning and the end, of “affairs of state,” or “military and political affairs” seems important. I wonder if these references are there as a way of drawing attention to the narrator’s narcissism. In the beginning, he describes the affairs of state only in terms of the impression they make on HIM. Not on the effects they have on the populace at large. At the end, again, these public matters are dismissed as unimportant, irrelevant to him. Is the story leading us to consider the situation of a man who views the vulnerability, suffering, compassion, self-sacrifice of other people -- of a whole nation, even -- only in terms of how those "incidents" play into his own private drama?
Another thing occurs twice in this very short story: “I was almost afraid to turn my thoughts on myself.” But his thoughts have been on himself the whole entire time. And “makes me try to think about myself.” Again, that’s all he’s been doing! The juxtaposition of his self-thoughts in the final paragraph with his continued disinterest in the larger affairs of society seems important. His self-satisfaction ends the story. He sees himself as having nobly -- even humbly -- passed through shame, and now being on an upward trajectory of reform, newly endowed with courage. His own personal drama is “more vivid” than what he sort of dismisses as “actual life.” Which the actual people around him are actually living.
There is this Buddhist sutra I love...its a sort of Marvel superhero story of intergalactic wisdom and compassion filled with some funny scenes where stodgy old monks are having their minds blown, by this one charming dharma scallawag and his wacky friends. It’s called the Vimalakirti Sutra and at one time it probably would have been the most popular Buddhist text in China (my impression...not an expert.) Dunno if it would have fallen out of favor by the 20s.
Anyway, there is this repeated motif in there of average people transforming to become big and also being small at the same time. After one of these transformations, our hero Vimalakirti explains to one of the historic Buddha’s disciples what that monk, Shariputra, is missing:
Vimalakirti said, "Ah, Shariputra, the Buddhas and bodhisattvas have an emancipation that is called Beyond Comprehension. When a bodhisattva dwells in this emancipation, he can take something as tall and broad as Mount Sumeru and put it inside a mustard seed without enlarging one or shrinking the other, and Mount Sumeru, king of mountains, will still have its original shape. Moreover, the Four Heavenly Kings and the gods of the Trayastrimsha heaven [who live on Mount Sumeru] will not even know or realize where they have gone to. Only those destined for enlightenment will be able to see that Sumeru has been put inside a mustard seed. This is called dwelling in the doctrine of the emancipation Beyond Comprehension.
That’s what I thought about when the driver walked away from the rickshaw.
So much of the action of the story is driven by the changes in the wind. First, the heavy wind clears the loose dust off the roadway. Then the wind lets up a little. The combination of high wind (clears away dust) and low wind (less resistance on the road) allows the rickshaw to speed up, and hit the woman. It's implied that the rickshaw might not have hit her at all if not for her loose ragged clothing, "fluttering in the wind" and becoming entangled on the shaft.
The wind is "responsible" for much of what happens in the story, rising and falling in an almost pernicious way to create the circumstances for "the incident."
The narrator tells us from the start that "so-called affairs of state' led him to think badly about humanity thus hardening his heart. He then tells us of this incident that "woke" him up.
What "woke" him up had nothing to do with "affairs of state." Quite the contrary. It was the state of human grace demonstrated by a person far below consideration in military and political affairs. In that act the rickshaw driver became the powerful one. The one who could make a difference in the life of another person.
This made him feel little, insignificant, drained of self-importance. Impotent. When approached by the police officer, the only thing he had that could restore his sense of worth was money. He was disquieted by this insignificant act.
And he continued to be distressed as he relives this incident. His involvement in affairs of state, his education, his wealth touched no one but himself. Yet it gives him "fresh courage and hope." To do what? To change. To learn to open his heart. Again... and again... and again....
I’ve re-read An Incident several times, dissected it, puzzled over it. I've little to add to all the insightful comments and I'm anxious to hear what George has to say. That said, I woke up this morning and it triggered a memory of mine, one that is associated with strong waves of emotion.
The story got me thinking about my dear sister. Beautiful, creative, sensitive, anorexic, alcoholic, homeless, then dead. My feelings seeing her (and remembering seeing her, years later) in her element, the street, from my elevated perch. The mix of feelings any of us feel when encountering a homeless person, maybe inebriated, unavoidably dirty, perhaps threatening. Their wounds seem self inflected, and any help provided will likely be turned into mind-numbing drugs or alcohol. On the other hand, they are a living breathing person, it could be a relative, it could be you in their position, there but for chance. You feel waves of empathy and waves of disgust. Fleeting, competing feelings. Which feeling dominates? Well, I suppose it depends.
Holding my take on the story, but FWIW thought I'd share this John Steinbeck quote, which just popped up in my Twitter feed (via Jon Winokur):
"If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another. The formula seems to lie solely in the aching urge of the writer to convey something he feels important to the reader. If the writer has that urge, he may sometimes, but by no means always, find the way to do it. You must perceive the excellence that makes a good story good or the errors that make a bad story. For a bad story is only an ineffective story."
The first time I read this story, i read it in my usual way, which is to just read through, fairly quickly, getting the gist of the plot and leaving it at that. With this story, I did the same, but since George asked that we focus on what we were feeling, I was aware of feeling a kind of hurt, a pain. I was worried from the start—I think I’m worried at the start of every story. And then my worry increased because an old woman had fallen and now the kind rickshaw man is going to perhaps get in trouble for helping her. Those were my main emotions. When the story ended with a note of hope, I felt a bit cheated. It seemed a quick kind of ending, without enough explanation.
Then I read the story again, only this time I did as George had taught us to do with Cat in the Rain. I read each sentence, thought about what it was doing there, and then read the next sentence and thought about how the writer had purposely written it to follow the previous one. I thought about how every word in the story had been chosen for a reason. And I found myself paying close, close attention to every single nuance. It was amazing how the story opened up to me. A story that had meant almost nothing to me on first reading, was suddenly a beautiful thing, overflowing with compassion and wonder and beauty and hope and—at the same time—hopelessness. I found so much meaning in this ‘incident,’ which was both the inciting incident of the story as well as the inciting incident of the main character’s life.
George has asked for specifics. I will offer one here, though I wrote down many. For much of the story, the main character has thoughts. He has no problem thinking. He’s got opinions and we hear them. But then—suddenly, he cannot think. Even at the end of the story, long after the incident, he can’t really think, though he tries to think about himself. And this is such an amazing aspect of the story. The incident haunts him, even more than the politics of his era. He can’t quite grasp it, but he recognizes within the rickshaw driver’s actions something buried deep inside of himself—so deep, that he reaches for coins without knowing why. Somewhere deep inside his humanity lurks, but he can’t access that. His life has been too tamped down by the situation where he lives. The politics of his time and place. A people who are not allowed to think for themselves.
I’ll probably write more later, but all I’ve got is my iPad at the moment without ability to switch between screens.
When I was five, we went to a garage sale in Birmingham, Alabama, and there, between a duct taped La-Z-Boy and a lidless blender, was a rickshaw. It stood out like some exotic gem and was for sale for thirty dollars. My parents agreed (to our surprise) to buy it for us kids. It was bright yellow with red scrollwork, and one of the two wheels was off-kilter, like an old grocery cart.
Whenever I read about rickshaws, in my head they're all yellow with red scrollwork and wobble a bit. In this story, I pictured everything as black, white, and gray, except for the bright yellow rickshaw, colored by my memory. The narrator mentions that the memory he recounted is "more vivid than in actual life", as I suspect that of my rickshaw may be. We broke the rickshaw in under a week, to my parents' dismay. That had been a lot of money for them. Are regret and guilt such strong emotions that they produce some of our most vivid memories?
This is probably not what you're looking for, but it is all I can think about after reading the story twice. And I mean ALL I can think about is that damn yellow rickshaw, looming large like the retreating driver. I just emailed my dad to retroactively thank him for buying it for us.