Xiahou Dun's eye: did he really eat it?

[Zhou Zero]

Did Xiahou Dun really eat his eye? I'm about 1/4 through the 2,200+ pages of this unabridged book by Luo, but my friend from China says that Xiahou Dun didn't eat his own eye. I'm convinced he did, but she says he didn't. After all, the novel is "7 parts truth, 3 parts fiction". Someone reveal the truth to me!

[Ender]

After Cao Cao returned from Xuzhou, Dun followed him to attack Lü Bu. He was hit by an arrow and lost his left eye.

According to SGZ he did infact lose his eye. But, it says nothing of him eating it when he lost it.

[Zhou Zero]

wow. thanks. but i swear that in RTK by Luo Guangzhong, he said something like, "Essence of my father, blood of my mother, I cannot throw this away!" then he ate it.

[Zanbatou]

Meh, who knows? It's one of those events that we will never truly know what happened. Frankly, I don't care, Dun's still tough for sustaining that injury and fighting again.

[Zhou Zero]

AMEN!! it's a wonder that arrow didnt pierce anything vital! not even his brain!!

[TheGreatNads]

wow. thanks. but i swear that in RTK by Luo Guangzhong, he said something like, "Essence of my father, blood of my mother, I cannot throw this away!" then he ate it.

That is the novel.(SGYY) Ender is going by the historical SGZ.

[Ts'aoist]

I read somewhere that the Chinese at that time looked at their bodies as extensions of their ancestors or something like that. Like, they woulnd't cut their hair because it was a gift from their parents.

Maybe the same goes for the rest of the body, incl. the eyes. If that's the case, maybe Xia Hou Dun really did eat his eye.

[Kuan P'ing]

wow. thanks. but i swear that in RTK by Luo Guangzhong, he said something like, "Essence of my father, blood of my mother, I cannot throw this away!" then he ate it.

Yeah it definitely says that in the book. I can believe it though. People back then were a little different. But I kinda thought family wans't so important sometimes in that time, you know, the whole Liu Bei being more happy to see Zhao Yun than his own son after Chang Ban. Or the whole of when that guys killed his wife and fed her to Liu Bei when he didnt return anything on his hunt. If this were true, why did it matter about his father's "essence" (eww) and his mother's blood? (He ate the eye raw too, I mean it would be different if it were cooked....)

AMEN!! it's a wonder that arrow didnt pierce anything vital! not even his brain!!

In the novel that kinda stuff happened all the time - "amnd the arrow hit him full on in the face," or "The bow string snapped and the arrow pierced his cheek," man if you get shot in the face you die...

[Mod Edit (Kong): Don't worry about the double-post. Just press the "edit" button next time to edit your original post. It's easy!]

[ZhangBaihu]

I read somewhere that the Chinese at that time looked at their bodies as extensions of their ancestors or something like that. Like, they woulnd't cut their hair because it was a gift from their parents.

Maybe the same goes for the rest of the body, incl. the eyes. If that's the case, maybe Xia Hou Dun really did eat his eye.

Your mother and father gave you only one body. Therefore to cut off the hair that grows from it without care, or to deface it with tattoos as if it were some freeway overpass, or to willingly damage the flesh and bone of the one body they gave you in any other way is to be an ingrateful child.

Or so Confucian sentiment goes...

[Kong Wen]

Your mother and father gave you only one body. Therefore to cut off the hair that grows from it without care, or to deface it with tattoos as if it were some freeway overpass, or to willingly damage the flesh and bone of the one body they gave you in any other way is to be an ingrateful child.

Or so Confucian sentiment goes...

So because Xiahou Dun did not cause the damage to his own body, he would not have been expected to consume his own eye... he was just being fervently Confucian.