No Saco Nada De La Escuela

I believe Luis Valdez named this play “No Saco Nada De La Escuela” because the characters never really learn anything but how to be prejudice and racist. There are absolutely no history lessons or in any lessons. The students are passed based on whether they know the acronyms to the "ABC's". I felt like they were not there to learn scholastically but to learn that "whites are always on top". Meaning they are not obtaining anything useful from school they are learning how to be stepped on and how to stay in the role society has assigned to them.

Intellect and Strength In Ti-Jean and His Brothers

I believe the role of intellect and strength is to show that they cannot stand on its own. What I mean is that you have nothing if you are book smart and have no common sense and the same with strength. Intellect also represent the quality that the white man is known for, and Ti-Jean being killed by the Devil because he didn't pay attention to the things his book convinced him were rubbish shows that intellect alone is nothing. I also felt he thought he was too smart to talk to animals which prevented him from receiving the proper advice. Gros-Jean felt that he was much stronger and the animals were so insignificant that he also treated them disrespectfully, missing their valuable advice. Which proves that intellect and strength in the wrong hands and on their own is useless.

Ti_Jean and His Brothers

In Ti-Jean and his brothers we see the Devil in several forms we meet the devil himself, the planter, Bolom and the old man. The devil asks the brothers to almost overcome their imperfections. For example Gros-Jean is very cocky about his strength and gets angry rather quickly so the Devil disguised as the old man gives him the advice to be patient and he fails when he gets aggravated with all the work he is doing for the planter which is another of the devils disguises . I believe he feels he is smart because he asks them to perfect a quality about them he feels they will not be able to fix and Ti-Jean and Gros-Jean fail at the tasks. Ti-Jean the youngest of the brothers manages to get him “vexed” and ends up defeating him forcing the Devil to give Ti-Jean what he wanted. The Devil seems to be very arrogant because he thinks he can defeat the three brothers by knowing their weaknesses and using i9t against them.

The Qing Ding Pearl

The Qing Ding Pearl is very different from the other plays we have read thus far. This play is our first Chinese play and it is very short. The play is much older and a lot more traditional than the other plays. The author uses a lot of metaphoric language for example Li Chun states in the beginning of Scene 1 “I’ve fought fierce tigers on the southern mountains.” 573. This play is also much older than the other plays we have read. It goes back to the Sung dynasty. Also the white pearl is symbolic fo purity and is consider to be lucky and almost magical amongst some of the characters.