Saboteur Analysis

Saboteur
By Ha Jin

"Within over a month eight hundred people contracted acute hepatitis in Muji. Six died of the disease, including two children. Nobody knew how the epidemic had started".

The short story Saboteur is an exploration of one character's radical shift in his faith and belief in  institutions and  the government when he is unjustly locked away in a prison for days on end. However whilst the majority of  story  expands more into the situation of how it intimately feels to be harmed and  failed by the institutions you believe are there to protect you, the author also brings another complex concept to light. This concept is how should one act and more importantly show resistance to a  governing body or authority whose  corruption and self-serving actions have negatively harmed you.  The quote chosen describes the route of opposition the Mr. Chiu, the main character of the story has chosen. However the path of revenge he has chosen to take on his aggressors is one that  has been rashly thought out is being carried out through intense anger.  
         
       After he has been made to bend and yield before the whims of the police officers who arrested him, Mr. Chiu decides to spread his disease amongst the different food vendors in the city. I arose at this conclusion due to the scene where that "As if dying of hunger,Mr.Chiu dragged his lawyer from restaurant to restaurant near the police station, but at each place he ordered no more than two bowls of food. Fenjin wondered why his teacher wouldn't stay at one place and eat his fill". What raised my  suspicions about Mr. Chui's motives and deterred me from the view that he was simply enjoying his freedom out of prison was the fact that the only stopped at restaurants that where near the prison, where potentially the corrupt  police officers he hated  might frequent. In addition, as he was eating at these places he kept mumbling darkly to himself, "If only I could kill all the bastards!". However in the quote that I have chosen the reader comes to the realization that  that Mr.  Chui's rash actions had far-reaching and unpredictable consequences. 

                  It is in this quote I feel as though Ha Jin made an extremely powerful commentary on the potentially devastating impact of ill-planned, ill-timed, and emotionally driven retaliation against  governing bodies and authorities which have inflicted harm.  From the quote the reader can surmise that that he most likely not only infected and fatally impacted  his intended targets, the police officers, but also many innocent people, including the next generation- the children. There fore through Mr. Chui's character, it is as if Ha Jin is telling the reader, one can do more harm than good if they do not plan their resistance against corrupt governing bodies and authorities,  with a level-head and a clearly defined positive impact. Fro when the reader views the big picture of what happened in the world of the story, Mr. Chiu's thoughtless actions  ended up being more of a terror and literal disease  to the livelihoods and futures of the people of Muji, than the corrupt police force ever were. In the end he became all that he had vehemently claimed he wasn't in the beginning - a saboteur.