A Lacanian Perspective to Punishment in Children’s Stories in the Chinese Culture: Symbolic Suicide as Retribution and Redemption

Children’s literature was once created with the primary purpose of educating children. In traditional European fairy tales, death and torture are often adopted as a common means to punish characters for and to discipline children from committing undesired behaviorus. However, how is punishment depicted in children’s stories in the East?

In this paper, I investigate the sin and the punishment of two well-known characters in Chinese children’s stories: Chang'e (嫦娥), the young woman whose stealing of the the elixir of life from her husband and flying to the Moon marked the tragic origin of the Mid-Autumn Festival, and Nezha (哪吒), the arrogant but powerful youth who slew the dragon prince and repaid his murderous crime by self-mutilation of dismemberment to “return” his bones and flesh to the parents. Originated from ancient Chinese mythology and classic literature, the presence of Chang’e the Moon Goddess and Nezha the Third Lotus Prince is prominent in television series, live action films, animation as well as video games for children and young adults.

Through the lens of Lacanian psychoanalysis, I explore the nature of their punishment, eternal solitude and self-dismemberment respectively, with reference to the specific sins they committed, and examine how severe punishment is more often represented in the form of ostracism and symbolic death rather than corporal punishment per se in a collectivist, non-Western culture. A parallel reading of these two characters and stories, I propose, also indicate how punishment may function both as a means of retribution and redemption.

Keywords: Chinese mythology, psychoanalysis, symbolic death