After reading Chia Pien[A Change in the Family] by Wang Wen-hsing, many people are angry with the protagonist and even have the impulse to beat him because they can not endure his manner of treating his father. Though the protagonist is not a dutiful son, his performance, a reaction based on his father's sordid actions and his lack of rights in his family, is not yet as unreasonable and unfilial as young readers may think.
His performance is not incomprehensible if we understand his father first of all. In his child's mind, his father was a great man because of being well-educated in France. After growing up he finds his father is just a rough guy, and his French educational background is a great lie. Besides, other bad deeds impress him so much, for example, stealing his mother's dowry, cursing colleagues behind their backs, kneeling down in front of his mother without even doing anything wrong. Those discoveries result in his changing his view of his father from heroic adoration to complete despair.
Thus, his violent speeches reveal an intense mental imbalance, which derives from knowing clearly about his father's falsehood, irresponsibility, cowardliness, and narrow-mind. It is unfair to ask the protagonist to be filial regardless of whether his father deserves that devotion or not.
Furthermore, the protagonist's behavior reflects more than a superficially ethical problem; behind the unrespectful performance is the protest of his rights being invaded. Through his wrathful words, he intends to expose a tradition existing constantly in the Chinese family: overemphasizing filial piety has deprived children of being themselves. It is not correct at all for parents to interrupt children's study to ask them to clean, fetch something, or question them, as his parents did. Without any reason except for being children, should children be faithful audiences of their parents' quarrels, and should their opinions be denied or put into secondary consideration?
If children have violent protest as the protagonist does, those people brainwashed by tradition will charge them with being offenders against filial piety. Afraid of this censure, most children would rather suppress their won needs than strive for their rights. In fact, the protagonist plays the role of a rebel who goes against the unreasonable oppression of human rights more than that of an unreasonable son.
The protagonist, reacting to his father's performance and his own need for human rights, does not necessarily deserve as much censure as many readers think.
