What Makes a Man?
I wish I was wrong for saying this but from this story, Hao Nan isn’t seen as a man by his village for not being able to rape Shuling. After word spread to the town about what happened, Hao Nan received ridicule for example, “By now the villagers no longer counted Nan as a man. Lots of children would call out “Dog-Scared” when they ran into him” (Ha Jin 198). The author doesn’t tell us what becomes of the other men, Shuling, or her husband Sang. The only result after we know of is that Nan isn’t the same. The end is confusing and I even feel a little bit of remorse for Nan.
In the beginning, he didn’t want to participate but he went along anyway. Why? “This was an opportunity to learn how to handle a woman” (Ha Jin 193). Nan agreed to go along partly because he wanted to have experience with a woman before he married his fiancee and maybe peer pressure too. It’s terrifying to think that gang rape is brought up so easily by Shang and for the other men to be agree to it. Being raped is universally a woman’s greatest fear but to Sang it is to, “teach her a lesson” (Ha Jin 192).
I think that Nan didn’t go through with it because the experience he really wanted with a woman was romantic intimacy, not rape. When it was his turn and he looked in her eyes he knew he couldn’t do it. The dog barking scared him but the other men in the room couldn’t see that it wasn’t just the sound of the dog barking that made him back out.
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What confused me in the end is why did Soo Yan’s family break off the engagement? I’m quite sure that it’s because they heard that Nan can’t get it up although I feel uncertain. The fact that Nan’s masculinity is held up by his “Yang” as they call it speaks volumes about how society, at the time, treats men and women. He’s not a man to his town not because he almost raped a woman, rather he’s not a man to them because he lost his Yang and couldn’t.
I think the ending was a happy ending even though it’s not self explanatory. Nan sees the dog that scared him and wanted to kick it but when he sees his ex he’s suddenly has to act right in front of her so he feeds the dog instead. Nan is watching her. “ She wore cream-colored clothes, her fiery gauze scarf waving in the breeze. With a short hoe on the shoulder, she looked like a red-crowned crane moving against the green field” (Ha Jin 198). I did a little research and cranes in Chinese culture symbolize longevity and are a good omen. I have a theory that Nan lost his Yang from that night because he was traumatized from it. He didn’t get his Yang back because he feels guilty for ruining his engagement with Soo Yan.
My question to you is, did Hao Nan get what he deserved?
works cited
http://chinesehoroscop-e.com/astrology/crane-in-chinese-culture.php
