Li’s collection of stories, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers , in which “Immortality” appeared, was greeted with universal acclaim. Reviewers admired Li’s treatment of the different ways in which Chinese people came to terms with the dramatic changes in their society during the 1990s and also her many portraits of Chinese immigrants adapting to…
Tag: Yiyun Li
Immortality by Yiyun Li – Setting
Chinese History in the Twentieth Century China’s two thousand years of imperial rule by various dynasties, the last of which was the Qing dynasty, ended in 1912 when the army overthrew the dynasty and established a short-lived republic. This change in power was followed by a ten-year period of fragmentation in which various “warlords,” provincial…
Immortality by Yiyun Li – Literary Devices
Point of View and Setting The point of view from which the story is told is an unusual one, since the narrator is not an individual voice but a collective one: the members of the town stretching over a period spanning many generations. This point of view effectively conveys a sense of community; the town…
Immortality by Yiyun Li – Themes
Mind Control The story shows some of the negative consequences of a totalitarian system, in which the government controls every aspect of people’s lives, including how they behave and what they think. The minds of the townspeople are controlled by the Communist Party, which is their only authority for what is happening both in their…
Immortality by Yiyun Li – Characters
Dictator The dictator is not named and does not appear directly in the story, but his presence is felt everywhere. His photograph appears all the time in the newspapers during the 1950s; at that time, he is “the only superstar in the media,” and the townspeople refer to him as “Our Father, Our Savior, the…
Immortality by Yiyun Li – Summary
“Immortality” is told in the first person plural by a narrator who represents an entire Chinese town over the course of the twentieth century. The narrator begins by going back to the time of the Chinese imperial dynasties, when members of the imperial family were served by eunuchs who attended to their every need. Eunuchs…