Final 1

Class 5. (17mb) I want to know what Xiang Yu is like: a big man without an attention to detail, able and spirited (18mt). He gives up swordsmanship and letters to study the art of attacking with 10,000 men and yet, 46m and 47t, Sima reports that he kills four or five hundred men by himself—and then another twenty men die fighting over his corpse. Furthermore, on 41mb, Xiang challenges the King of Han to single combat to decide their fate. This seems to be the exact opposite of the skills Xiang had proposed to learn. He gives up the chance of fighting with his armies for personal combat. Despite saying he wants to be one type of way, he seems to be a perfect bully, using force to get what he wants. And it works—until rage derails him. 

To wit: on 18mb, barely a page after giving up swordsmanship, Xiang seizes power from the governor of Kuaiji, in what seems to be a peaceable meeting, by cutting off his head and killing “several dozen attendants.” Later, on 24b, he repeats this same kind of behavior when he cuts Song Yi’s head off during a report. The generals submit in fear and Xiang becomes “supreme general”—this is a great example of how a bully would act: beating up (or killing) someone bigger or more powerful to cow the others into following him. These killings do not include the rage that appears often throughout his later career (28t, 28mt, 36b, 41m, 42t and 42mb). During his enragements on 41m and 42mb, he is talked of out of the rageful decisions by counselors. His hot blood has cooled enough to see the cold, calculating reasons of others—the same kind of reason he exhibited when he killed his superiors. He benefits by taking their colder advice.

While Xiang blames Heaven for his downfall (45b), Sima might be showing us that it was Xiang’s rage that did so—or at least warning us to keep calm when ruling. Xiang had conquered the world through cold-blooded violence, and even when he got heated, he twice cooled enough to listen to his counselors, which benefitted him. Although his rage does not seem to end him, it is his self-pity in blaming Heaven, when really, it might be that he had been outplayed by the king of Han who wisely refused to go near the bully with a sword and instead beat him with brains (41mb), teaching us that to use our minds without the passion of rage is the most powerful thing we can do.

Class 6 206t. Sima accuses Li Si of “heeding Zhao Gao’s evil advice.” Mr. Menzer had asked in class if good workers can help bad government to last longer. I wanted to explore this idea, that Li Si was a good worker helping a bad government, but both Sima and I thought Li Si was worse than his posthumous reputation (206mt). He turned into a rat among rats and, instead, helped to end the line of emperors sooner.

Sima did not give Zhao Gao his own chapter, perhaps out of spite, but perhaps because his story was so intertwined with Li’s. On 179m, Li sighs and says, “like the rats—men depend on the surroundings they choose for themselves.” First, I’d like to draw attention to his sigh. On 190m, he sighs before accepting Zhao’s plot to install an emperor of their choosing. It seems to be a sign of his shame at lowering himself. Likewise, that first sigh, when he recognizes that men are like rats, is him realizing his own powerlessness, that he is a man who will find a “rat” cohort and be no better than them. Some part of him knows his weakness—that when he is surrounded by rats he will sink to their level, as he does when he goes in cahoots with Zhao (190m)?

At first, Li wants to serve “someone worthy” under whom he can “win merit” (179m), but after his second sigh, he is instead (194mb) “reluctant to lose title and stipend” and so “toadies to Second Emperor’s wishes.” This is not the man he wanted to be— his first sigh, the sigh that lets him know he will do as rats do, or, maybe, that he will turn into a rat, lets us know this. Sima lets us know how Li wanted to be near the end of his life and I’d like to extrapolate to say he probably wanted to be as such his whole life (and his sighs indicated his break from this path): near the end of his life, he “finally made an effort to admonish and correct.” (206t) This is the man he wanted to be but was swayed too often toward lesser goals—his own merit rather than the good of the ruler and the people and setting up himself and his family by listening to Zhao’s counsel on 190t. At first, I wanted to read this story as condemnation of Zhao—but I feel too bad for him. Even Sima condemns his “evil” advice. He is a rat, fending for himself, perhaps made when he was castrated. But Li is the real tragedy, he is the man who we watch sink, who gets too caught up in his baser desires, and is, in the end, like the Second Emperor (205t), destroyed by another rat. This then, is Sima’s warning to us and why the chapter is Li’s and not Zhao’s: do not follow rats for you too shall be eaten.