Four Eyes

Finally Reaching the Dream

by Connor Corcoran


Propaganda Mao uses to "brain wash" the youth.

The youth in China don’t have much to look forward at the moment as our decade of the 1960’s has been dark. There are some boys who can look forward like the one I am writing about. Before he was born no one would call his lucky and unlikely occurrence a dream, but today we think otherwise. People call him Four Eyes here on Phoenix Mountain. Mao Zedong has put young men, the country’s youth, into “re-education” which is euphemism to say the least. It is actually a new type of lifestyle, one of labor and simplicity. Four Eyes was finally set free from his re-education today and can go back home to a better life with his mom. He was set free because he worked hard carrying rice, poop, and growing crops. Not only was he successful with his loyalty but he earned respect form the adults on the mountain.
At the scene one could see how happy he was and the jealousy of all of the other boys. I felt a sense of sympathy for the young men who weren’t so lucky as to have undergone the situation of Four Eyes. The young boy seemed arrogant though for he didn’t even acknowledge the others around them and wasn’t full of life and gratitude. I believe that the others would have been much more enlightened by such a situation. Four Eyes worked harder than them though. The other boys could have stepped it up a level but it is hard in such depressing times. His mother was noticeably happy and very enthusiastic to be around her son again.
He tells me that he plans on going back to the city to write for a literary journal, he loves to write and composed a few verses while he was here on the mountains. Now that he can go back he can look forward to freedom, more learning, and a career of his desire. It is sad to say almost every other boy his age will never reach that fate and will continue to live out this life of labor and poverty as they do here in the mountains.