Cao Yu's The Thunderstorm - Triceratops Home

allowing his son to meet his birth mother, coincidentally occurring just as the entire rest
of the cast had worked out their problems and were seemingly about to live happy, if
unwittingly incestuous, lives, makes the entire ugly affair come to life, and directly
causes the climactic scene. Despite the fact that the tragedy is all Puyuan's fault, he is
one of the few characters to make it to the epilogue unscathed. His business remains
successful, he remains healthy, and only the destruction of his family could be interpreted
as any kind of karmic punishment. In a play based on traditional Chinese morality, be it
Buddhist, Daoist, or Confucian, there is no way that Puyuan would have ended the play
alive, and a classical playwright would have been justified in having Puyuan commit
suicide, like Shiping's daughter Sifeng did, in order to cleanse himself of his sins.
However, Puyuan remains alive, in order to make the Aristotelian tragedy more poignant:
he is forced to live with his mistakes until he dies.
The Thunderstorm's Characters in Society
The Thunderstorm's characters are representative of the era in which it was
written, and their portrayal is an apolitical commentary on contemporary society. Puyuan
is the head of a mining company, while his unknown son, Lii Dahai, is a worker in his
factory. Dahai is elected representative of the striking workers, but as the play progresses,
it is clear that he has been tricked, and that his "comrades" have already given in and
gone back to work. Cao Yu sides with neither person; their conflict is merely to add a
further level of irony to the situation, and neither is presented as a heroic figure or a role
model. Even during the Communist era, Cao Yu never rewrote Leiyu to be more
compliant with the dominant political thought, despite making several unsatisfactory