The General's Monument: Summary

The general in his delirious state of mind is able not only to transgress the limits of space and time. He also is able to forget his own past wrongdoings. For instance, the one of them and the most memorable for him, is how he drove hi wife to commitment of suicide because of the alleged relation of her father to Communism. The general frequently revises his memories and is more than desperately willing to account himself the model of a flawless hero: loving father, devoted and attentive husband, great and brave soldier. Every time he travels through events of the past, he neglects some details, but adds others. Consequently, in the end he is not able to distinguish the truth from his own falsification. Except of the general the story has

Both are also engaged in the imaginative reconstruction of the life of the general. Shi is considered by the general as romantic version of the Nationalist hero, whose life is a embodiments of the state and the party. At the same time Weiyang is a version of a father with tyrannical character, whose Spartan approach in education turned

It includes intertextuality which is common for postmodernist narrations and which lays in crossing of the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction. The story also includes elements of magic realism, which are skilfully inserted in the line of the the narration. The author, by applying of a simple trick of non-disclosure of full information about he characters, makes the reader to believe that characters of the story are endowed with supernatural powers, in particular the general, who seems to be able to travel through space and time, but in reality suffers from Alzheimer’s disease. Due to these elements, tricks and the theme which is discussed in the story – the put into question of the truthfulness of the history writing – this piece of work is worth to be considered as one of the most significant creations of Taiwan