Individualism, Tradition, Silence, and Masculinity in Waiting by Ha Jin

Individualism, Tradition, Silence, and Masculinity in

Waiting by Ha Jin

The novel follows the fortunes of Lin Kong, an army doctor who waited eighteen years for a chance to pursue a relationship with his girlfriend, Manna Wu. I have to say that when I read the novel I thought to myself I had never ever encountered such a non self-aware character–if there is such a term– before.  Lin Kong seemed absolutely clueless. He only knew he was unhappy in his marriage. He  married Shuyu out of a sense of filial duty so she could take care of his parents in his absence.  He had not met her till he came home from Muji City where he worked as a doctor at the military hospital.  He was mailed a photograph of the girl, “and he agreed to be engaged, feeling she was a fine, normal girl.” When he did see her before the wedding,  he found her old and ugly with bound feet that are only four inches long. However, his parents were adamant; they called her “suitable” and he agreed to marry her.  

  Once a year, Lin returned home to his from Muji City hospital, and asked his wife for a divorce.  The wife never consented to it.  At times, she elicited the support of her brother Bensheng, who was only too glad to accompany them to court to save the family’s honor and give testimony on behalf of his sister to prevent a divorce. Eighteen years is the period Lin would have to wait to get a divorce without his wife’s consent. So the novel is about the passage of time; each day is described in its minute detail while the years go rushing by not just without resolution but bringing a host of other devastating problems. First is the suppression of individualism and emotional life by the communist regime.  Then there was a clash of traditional and modern values and Lin, trapped in the loveless marriage, was forced to wait in silence. The man seemed to lack any passion;  however,  it was the social, psychological and intellectual “paralysis” of the period during the Cultural Revolution that impacted him.  And when Manna urged him to get a divorce, he was uncertain because to follow his heart seems just as frightening.  He is coerced all over again. 

Divorce was rare in Goose village.  And it was a small close knit community and folks were shocked that Lin would leave his hard working, self sacrificing wife to marry his “mistress”.  He even gets severely reprimanded by the judge presiding over his case, “Comrade Lin Kong, you are a revolutionary officer and should be a model for us civilians. What kind of a model have you become? A man who doesn't care for his family and loves the new and loathes the old – fickle in heart and unfaithful in words and deeds. Your wife served your family like a donkey at the millstone. After all these years, the grinding is done, and you want to get rid of her. This is immoral and dishonorable, absolutely intolerable.  Tell me, do you have a conscience or not?” (12) It was not just the rural community that is steeped in tradition, the city is hidebound as well. 

Waiting  deals with issues of masculinity; in this case, the masculinity crisis in which Lin Kong is trapped.  Lin, a tall quiet man, was “different from most young officers…seemed mature for his age which was thirty.  His glasses made him look urbane and knowledgeable.  People liked him, calling him Scholar or Bookworm, and every year he had been elected a model officer.” (31) He was careful about his image, his only transgression was hoarding books that would have been consigned to bonfires by the Red Guards.  Manna, who would borrow his books, stopped after some were confiscated.  Neither joined any revolutionary organization but they “dutifully participated in  political activities.”(58) They never broke any rules–they walked inside, never outside, the hospital compound; their conduct never revealed any intimacy.  His friend Ran Su made him promise that he would not have an “abnormal” relationship with Manna unless he divorced his wife. “By “abnormal” he meant “sexual”.” (59).  Lin was warned.

Manna, egged on by her friend Haiyan, gained access to an empty apartment in the city for an illicit rendezvous with Lin. She was both excited and apprehensive herself and the whole plan was crushed by Lin who scolded her for risking their careers and lives over something that could brand them as criminals. Soon after this, Manna issued Lin an ultimatum–he should get a divorce.  Lin had never considered this.  He had to now look within himself and find what he truly wanted. What was his reaction? “Love did not help.  The possibility of love only filled him with despondency and languor, as though he was sick in the soul.  If only he had never Known Manna; if only he could get back into his old rut again; if only he could return to an undisturbed, contented life.”(80) Lin failed to feel deeply, to be passionate enough to make changes to his life and be confident in his decisions.  Manna thought “Lin was too much of a gentleman, good tempered and studious, with little manly passion” (176) and wished he were more like Geng Yang who “...was more like a man to her, strong, straight-forward, fearless, and even coarse.” (176)  He was unscrupulous, a go-getter, and watched her with “hungry eyes”, all of which showed passion and sex-appeal.  She admired all this in him till she was raped.  Geng Yang represents the moral decline during the economic reforms  in the post Cultural Revolution period.  He had the same “lustful” look when he talked in a television interview about his construction company and the profits he made .   

When Lin did go back to his home that year, he realized what Shuyu did for his family, the sacrifices that she made on his behalf, taking care of his parents and their daughter and so did not have the heart to bring up the subject of a divorce. Lin used silence as a strategy to avoid confrontation and conflict.  “Are you a man or not? You have a fearful heart like a rabbit" (85) When Manna accused  him, Lin implored her to wait, afraid to think about how such an act would change his life.  

Lin was not a man of action.  “He felt as if there was some force beyond his control, of which he merely served as a vehicle, that would realize the divorce and start him on a new life" (214) When he brought Shuyu his wife over to the city, he was separated from Manna of necessity for a few days. “To tell the truth, he didn’t miss Manna, though he felt sorry for her.  Is this what love is like? he asked himself.  No wonder people say marriage is the death of love.” (214)  It wasn’t just his marriage he had to take care of.  After years of waiting, he finally communicated to his daughter via letter that she should come to the city where there were more opportunities for her. When Hua rejected his offer, he went back to his village one last time  to persuade her. When he finds out from a blushing daughter that she is in love, he is amazed that she was so confident in herself to know it.  “Could love be so simple and so easy?  Didn’t it take time to achieve mutual understanding and trust?”(225) Waiting helps Lin on his voyage of self-discovery and he admits to himself at the end of the novel that he is not made to love but to be loved.  "Maybe I've read too much, he reasoned, or maybe I'm too rational, better educated. I'm a scientist by training-knowledge chills your blood" (252).  What is interesting about this novel is that the reader is not sure whose story it is.  Is it Lin’s, Manna’s or Shuyu’s?  Shuyu adapts to a life in the city with her daughter, becomes more of her own person, discovers herself just like Lin. 

In a deceptively simple, minimalist style of writing, the author withholds his comments just as the characters restrain themselves, leading the reader in unhurried movement through the oppressive regime and seeing China through their eyes. Lin, at the end of the novel, when weary from the waiting, and weary with life, looks at his twins “..somehow,,,began to imagine trading places with them, having his life start afresh.  If only he himself had been carried by someone like this now; then he would have led his life differently.  Perhaps he would never have had a family.”(275) Absolutely free, under no one’s control.

Jin, Ha. Waiting. New York, Vintage Books, 1999.

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Why are the Women of “Heart Lamp” so Helpless ?

Why are  the Women of “Heart Lamp” so Helpless ?

The plight of women in these stories reminds me of the story of the baby elephant tied to a tiny stake with a thin rope. It struggles and cannot break free, and eventually gives up, believing it cannot escape. As the elephant grows, even though it is now big enough to easily break this same rope and stake, it doesn't try because it does not recognize its own strength.  It is the story of learned helplessness.  

Is it possible for a man to cherish his wife and keep her happy? In “Stone Slabs for Shaista Mahal”, Shaista is the wife of Iftikhar, a well-to-do worker in a factory.  He appears besotted with his beautiful wife, always making exaggerated declarations of love for her.  He would even build her a Taj Mahal, so pure and eternal was his love, he announced.  They had six children.  Shaista tells her friend Zeenat, “ ‘What to do Zeenat, I did not do any planning.  Before I even turned round to see what happened, I had had six children.  And your Bhai Saheb came in the way,’ she said, cocking her head at Iftikhar, ‘ when I thought of getting an operation done.  Now I will certainly get it done after number seven’.” With each pregnancy, she gets progressively weaker and dies after her seventh child.  She is complicit in allowing a chain of events that ends in disaster, fully aware that she is responsible for ruining her own health, her daughter’s life and the future of her seven kids.  Their daughter Asifa has to quit school to take care of her siblings.  Ifthikar “made her stop studying because girls do not need much education.” (10) However, Shaista feels she is helpless without the support of her husband.  And the husband who wanted to build a Taj Mahal for her,  marries an 18yr old girl soon after the appropriate mourning period the society mandates.  He is well on his way to ruining a few other lives. 

Husbands can do no wrong.  “Come to think of it, for us, that is, for us Muslims, it is said that, other than Allah above, our pati is God on earth.  Suppose there comes a situation where the husband’s body is full of sores, with pus and blood oozing out from them , it is said that even if the wife uses her tongue to lick these wounds clean, she will still not be able to completely repay the debt she owes him.” (8) And husbands do not owe wives anything.  In “Black Cobras” Aashraf’s husband Yakub leaves her because she gave birth to her third daughter and he was hoping for a son. She appeals to the local religious leader, who ignores her repeatedly because he has other work that takes priority.  The lady she works for tells her to stand up for herself and promises help, “People like you will not get justice if you don’t demand it.  Give a petition to the masjid, gather a panchayat around and call me.  I will tell your man, and that mutawalli, what the Sharia is, what justice is.  Twisting  the Qur’an and Hadiths the way they want in front of a helpless woman is not justice.”(54)  However, even this method did not get her justice.  All the wives of men in the community sympathized with her but were powerless to help her. They longed to comfort her; the mutawalli’s wife had food for her but didn’t want to be seen handing it to her.   Back at the mosque, the sight of his wife appealing to the religious leader further angered her husband. “Yakub burned with uncontrollable anger even in that cold.  ‘Lei! If you who squats to pee has this much arrogance, how much arrogance should I, who stands to piss, have?’ he screamed, in his very dignified manner.” (57).  It’s nothing short of cruelty for a man to treat his wife and children with such anger and contempt, to ignore his own flesh and blood’s obvious illness and instead to declare himself a victim.

What keeps these women shackled so effectively?  There is no punishment more effective than public shaming.  They are constantly threatened with social disgrace and any protest would be a moral transgression. In ‘Heart Lamp’, Mehrun goes back to her parents, tired of her husband’s deception and infidelity. The first thing her parents want to know is if she informed anyone she was leaving.  “Why didn’t you tell them before leaving? It seems like you have made up your mind to bring us dishonor.” (100) She tells her parents her husband was seen with another woman and accuses them of not confronting her husband.  “And what should we do after we come and see him? Say we catch hold of him and ask him about it, and he says, yes, it is true–what can we do then?...What can we do if he says, I don’t want this woman called Mehrun, I will give her talaq?”(101)  The thought of divorce and the public humiliation their married daughter would heap on their heads is enough for them to scold her for her selfishness and escort her back to her errant husband.  Back at her house, she feels she has no choice but to give up her life and it’s only the thought of her helpless children struggling without her that she abandons that idea.

Who do they turn to then?  Only Allah can save them.  “Be a woman once, oh Lord!” is the cry of a helpless humiliated woman.  For only a  woman is forsaken by everyone and God. In her life, as in her death, she is enclosed within walls that she cannot break. “There were four walls around me at all times, and freedom, in the form of a breeze, that marvellous product of your pure imagination, touched my face only when I opened the window.” (199)  

Mushtaq’s women are isolated.  They do not benefit from being in a community.  They can rely only on their husbands to care for them and are most often abandoned by their parents who consider daughters a burden.  Religion, tradition and society allow Muslim men to remarry and not provide for their first wife and children. Not even other women bother to help.  Everyone preys on the vulnerable.  

Banu Mushtaq’s writings were part of a literary movement in Kannada in the 70s and the 80s called the Bandaya movement which challenged social injustices and protested against the discrimination of certain social classes including dalits and women. It was very important to use language that was colloquial, and contained the nuances of their dialect. Deepa Bhasthi translated these short stories taking into consideration the tone, the drama (the “haava-bhava”)  and the cultural knowledge of the original Kannada.

Mushtaq, Banu, and Deepa Bhasthi. Heart Lamp: Selected Stories. Penguin, 2025.

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