Family by Ba Jin
Published 1933 · 140,000 words · about 7 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction
How many words are on a page? A ReadingRate study
How hard is Family to read?
Family scores 29 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it relatively accessible. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 25 out of 100
- Ba Jin writes plain, direct modern vernacular, intended to reach young readers of the 1930s. Compared with The Great Gatsby, it has little ornament and no obscure diction.
- Sentence structure: 28 out of 100
- Sentences are short and clear, closer to Orwell's 1984 in directness than to Tolstoy. The family dramas are narrated in a straightforward manner.
- Abstraction: 32 out of 100
- The ideas about freedom and the old order are embodied in concrete events: Mingfeng's drowning, the birth in the shed, Juehui's departure. Argument stays rooted in scenes.
- Information density: 42 out of 100
- Many relatives and servants fill the compound, but the plot moves chronologically with clear markers. It is lighter than Anna Karenina's panorama.
- Narrative indirection: 22 out of 100
- Ba Jin tells readers what to feel and who is at fault. The novel is a protest and speaks plainly, much like Orwell's 1984.
- Symbolic density: 38 out of 100
- The compound, the lake and Shanghai carry clear meanings, but they are signposted rather than layered. This is closer to the obvious allegory of 1984.
- Ironic distance: 20 out of 100
- The anger is open and sincere, and the satire of the elders is direct. Little gap separates what the text says from what Ba Jin means.
- Resolution withholding: 30 out of 100
- The plot closes with Juehui's departure for Shanghai, and the grandfather's death resolves the central conflict. Only Juexin's fate remains uneasily open.
- Structural complexity: 28 out of 100
- The novel follows a linear chronology within one household, with a few shifting viewpoints among the brothers. It is as plain as the structure of 1984.
How Family is regarded
Family holds a literary regard score of 78 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.