Lust, Caution

Eileen Chang

3 ideas

1. Wong Chia-chi warns Yee at the jeweller

   Wong Chia-chi, a student from a patriotic drama troupe, poses as the businessman's wife Mrs. Mai. She joins Mrs. Yee's mahjong circle in occupied Shanghai to seduce Mr. Yee, a security chief in the Wang Jingwei collaborationist government, and lure him into a planned ambush at a jewellery shop. While he pays for a costly pink diamond ring and she reads tenderness in his face, she whispers 'Go, quickly'; he escapes, rounds up the plotters, and signs off on the whole group, her included, being shot that night.

2. Spent dignity dissolves loyalty to cause

   To make her cover convincing, the student group had Chia-chi lose her virginity to a fellow member. Afterward the comrades treated her with awkward contempt, and she felt used and isolated. When an organization consumes a member's body and dignity as an instrument while withholding respect, it erodes the bond that would hold her to the mission at the moment of choice.

3. Power lets the survivor author meaning

   After ordering her execution, Yee does not feel guilt. Instead he reinterprets her warning as proof that she loved him, so that in life and death she belongs to him. Seen this way, the powerful party in an unequal relationship absorbs even the other's sacrifice as confirmation of its own possession and desirability.

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