# XXIX: Arabesque explained — On a Chinese Screen

> Chapter companion for On a Chinese Screen by W. Somerset Maugham.

## What happens

The chapter presents a vivid and haunting description of the Great Wall of China, emphasizing its immense scale, solitude, and the human suffering embedded in its construction. The wall is portrayed as a silent, majestic, and terrible monument, indifferent to nature and time, stretching endlessly across the rugged landscape.

## Themes in this chapter

### Futility of Western Superiority

The wall's immense scale and the suffering it represents challenge any notion of Western superiority, highlighting the profound and alien grandeur of Chinese civilization.

### Colonial Ennui and Isolation

The wall's solitary and mysterious presence evokes a sense of isolation and existential ennui, reflecting the colonial experience of confronting an incomprehensible and indifferent landscape.

## Key lines

> There in the mist, enormous, majestic, silent, and terrible, stood the Great Wall of China.

The Great Wall of China loomed in the mist, vast, awe-inspiring, quiet, and fearsome.

_This opening line establishes the wall's overwhelming presence and sets the tone for the chapter._

> Ruthlessly, for it was built at the cost of a million lives and each one of those great grey stones has been stained with the bloody tears of the captive and the outcast, it forged its dark way through a sea of rugged mountains.

The wall was built mercilessly, costing a million lives, and every stone is soaked with the suffering of prisoners and exiles as it carves a dark path through the mountains.

_This emphasizes the immense human cost and cruelty behind the wall's construction._

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/on_a_chinese_screen_se/chapters/xxix-arabesque
- Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/on_a_chinese_screen_se
- All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/on_a_chinese_screen_se/chapters