Things Fall Apart (Part I)

This story seems to be one from rags to riches. Okonkwo, who started with next to nothing, rose to one of the higher positions in his clans. While almost striving to overcome everything his father represents, he rules his family with an iron fist taking no excuses for laziness. When a adjacent clan commits an offense on their clan, Okonkwo takes in a boy, Ikemefuna, from their clan to later be sacrificed. After 3 years, Ikemefuna has almost become part of their family, but the time has come to sacrifice him. Not wanting to be seen as weak Okonkwo goes to participate. Time goes on and at a funeral for one of the clansmen, Okonkwo's gun goes off and kills a boy. Now him and his family must be exiled from the clan for some time.

This story seems to focus around sadness for me. A man who has worked hard for everything he has and is striving to become the clan leader has it all taken away in an instant due to a freak accident.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (Part II)

The village headman was gone for a while so Luo decided to take this opportunity to visit the Little Seamstress each night and read the recently stolen books to her, all while the narrator would stay in their home and read the rest of the books to himself. They had decided not to work in the field whilst the headman was gone. One day the narrator came with Luo to the Seamstress's village. On the way there, he realized the danger Luo was facing daily to see her (a narrow, long, high path). This journey promptly gave the narrator a nightmare the next night. In this, the Little Seamstress fell off the ledge while prancing over it. The headman returned after having a wrong molar removed by a less than qualified dentist. He tried to get Luo to fill the problem tooth for him, but Luo refused. A few days later, the tailor came to the village. He stayed in the narrator and Luo's house upon hearing from his daughter that they could tell stories. For the next few days, the narrator told him the story of The Count of Monte Cristo. When he was nearing the end of the story, the headman took the narrator and threatened to take him to the secrurity office for spreading "reactionary trash". The headman bargained with Luo that if he'd fix his tooth, he wouldn't take the narrator. Luo accepted.

The two boys took this opportunity as a sort of revenge on the headmaster. Knowing that this would be very painful without an electric drill, they made it even more-so by going slowly.

After this, the book goes into a story told from three different perspectives, the old miller's, Luo's and the little seamstress's, to the narrator. The old miler's is told from a Leafy bush overlooking a pool of water where Luo and the seamstress were "swimming". He watched them for a while being sure that they would not notice him.
Luo's deals more with the seamstress's ability to swim and a keyring he would have her dive after from time to time. Then "today" the lost his keyring and something happened when the seamsress went to look for it that made Luo never want to come to that place again. After he had gotten back to his village that day, he learned that his mother had been rushed to the hospital and he needed to be by he side. The village headman gave Luo a month off to go because of the success of his dental treatment.
The seamstress tells of the day that they had lost Luo's keyring. Beforehand, they had eaten lunch and read some of The Count of Monte Cristo and proceeded to act out one of the more tragic scenes. After this, Luo threw his keyring into the water. The first time she tried to retrieve it, she had touched a snake at the bottom of the pool. The final time she almost had the key, but was then bitten by the snake which is the cause for their hesitance to return.