Shi Yu

Shi Yu is remembered for a constancy that does not bend with political conditions. Confucius calls him truly straightforward: when good government prevails in his state, he is like an arrow, and when bad government prevails, he is like an arrow. The comparison makes integrity a steady course rather than a reward for favorable circumstances.

Identity and Character

The text identifies Shi Yu as a historiographer and makes his defining quality a single, emphatic trait: straightforwardness. Confucius repeats the image of the arrow under both conditions, refusing to distinguish a compromised version of his character for troubled times from a virtuous one for good times. His moral clarity is thus presented as consistent across political change.

Conduct in Political Disorder

Shi Yu’s brief portrait appears beside a contrasting judgment of Qu Boyu. Qu Boyu enters office when good government prevails, but when the state is badly governed he can roll up his principles and keep them within himself. Shi Yu, by contrast, remains arrow-like in either condition. The juxtaposition distinguishes constancy from strategic withdrawal without making the latter equivalent to the former: the passage praises Qu Boyu as a superior man while reserving for Shi Yu the more absolute image of straightforwardness.

Narrative and Ethical Significance

The portrait is a compact example rather than a narrated biography: it supplies no particular deed, appointment, or episode from Shi Yu’s life. Instead, the repeated comparison carries the whole characterization. Set among teachings about political conduct and the superior man’s judgments, it presents integrity as something tested precisely when public circumstances change. Shi Yu’s significance lies in that unwavering standard, rendered in the spare image of an arrow that remains straight whichever way the state is governed.