Feng: M. Butterfly

The story starts around a French diplomat, Gallimard and a Chinese Peking opera singer, Song.  In the beginning, they work together for an opera, Madame Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini. Song acts Cho-Cho-San, the tragic oriental young lady who is known as “butterfly” in this classical opera. In fact, as a lot of other singers for female characters in Peking opera, Song is a man. He acts and sings as a female when he shows in the Peking operas. However, in his real life, he also pretends to be an oriental young lady. He tries to be a perfect woman for Gallimard to love with, because he works for Chinese government and plans to get political information from Gallimard.

As an oriental beautiful lady, Song and Cho-Cho-San are kind of like. Both of them are growing under the similar oriental culture. Not only the oriental society puts them and all other women down than man; but also they follow the traditional training and innocently grow to be slaves for man. Both of them are weak oriental women who need to be protected. Within the background of the opera, Song’s well done of the acting and singing brings out the spirit of the character who known as “Butterfly”. Meanwhile, the characters of Cho-Cho-San add Song the oriental weak and tragic beauty. Through Song’s acting, Gallimard feels more the spirits of Cho-Cho-San. Moreover, he finds himself more form Song, because he thinks that he had found his perfect woman who he can love and who he can protect as he can protect the butterfly from the classical tragical opera.  

Because of the background of the opera, Madame Butterfly; because of Song’s well acting on Cho-Cho-San; because of Song’s good pretending, finally Gallimard falls in love with Song, and he trusts his own love. He lives with Song and he even believes that Song has bore a boy for him. After their separating in China and back together in Paris, for his perfect woman and his loving son, he spies for China. However, how he could image that his perfect woman, who he has loving for 20 years, is a man? At the end, he is arrested and is sent to a court where he just gets to know that Song is a man. After the court, when he is arrested with Song in a same jail, he does not have any courage to face Song’s body. He does not want to realize that his love one, his butterfly is a man. For so many years he lives with his own imagination.

At the beginning, Gallimard believes that Song is his butterfly who is weak and tragic oriental woman; Song is a perfect woman to him; Song needs his love and protection; Song needs to be saved. Nevertheless, 20 years later he finds that he only loves and lives with his own imagination for so many years. He finally finds that he is the real tragic role in his real life. He never finds his love, and he is utilized. He is the real tragic one, the tragic butterfly.

As the story goes to the end, Gallimard finds he is the real tragic butterfly, but how about Song? Does Song still proud with his pretending? (He was ever proud with his successful acting. After he getting Gallimard’s trust and let him to believe that he has pregnant for Gallimard, he said the reason for why for the oriental opera always male acts being female is because male know female will how to react with male.) In so many years, does Song even feel love with Gallimard? When he is arrested back to China, what is from his eyes when he sits in the plane and knows that at that time Gallimard was faced the punishments for his spying? At that moment what will be in his mind or what he would think about his life? Is “Life is like a drama, and drama is like life.” the only sentence he could think about in his mind?

Zena: Woman Warrior, "White Tigers"

Important terms and characters:

• Ideograph - a symbol that represents an idea
• Drinking gourd - a dried and then hollowed-out melon or squash, often oddly shaped, that can be used as a drinking vessel
• Baron - socially and economically, the most important group of landowners—next to a country’s ruler—during feudal times.
• Brave Orchid – Maxine Hong Kingston’s Mother
• Fa Mu Lan – A character in the Chinese Folk story derived from “The Ballad of Mu-lan”. This woman warrior fights in place of her father when he is drafted into the emperor’s army and returns home to her family and resumes her normal life after battle.

 

   The “White Tigers” chapter opens up with Kingston saying that she was taught that she could be more than a wife or slave. She remembers how her mother, Brave Orchid, would talk story about the woman warrior Fa Mu Lan. Kingston then fantasizes about being Fa Mu Lan.

      She follows a bird up a mountain until she reaches a hut. There, an old couple tells her that if she stays with them for fifteen years they will train her to become a woman warrior. She would then return to her village and avenge her village against the baron and robbers. She agrees to stay and for fifteen years she undergoes intensive training, both physically and mentally. She spent years trying to survive the forest of the white tigers.

      While she is away, Kingston watches her family from a water gourd that the old man gave her. She sees her wedding ceremony and later her brother and husband being conscripted into the army by the baron. She wants to go help them but she can’t leave until she is 22 and ready.

      When the old couple tells her she is ready to leave, they give her powerful beads. She returns to her parents with the vow to go and fight the baron's army. Early in the morning, her parents take her and carve oaths and names on her back as a sign of revenge if she got killed. When she recovers from the pain, a white horse appears and she puts on a man's armor, clothing and ties up her hair. She prepares to leave and the villagers volunteer the sons that had hidden during the last conscription to go and fight with her.

      She becomes a great warrior and has many victories. When she meets her husband they stay together for a little and eventually have a child. They tie the umbilical cord to a flagpole out like her mother used to do so it dries out. When the baby is one month old, she sends her husband and baby away. She again becomes the slim young man she was before but she is lonely, becomes careless, and is almost defeated. She eventually leads her people to overthrow the corrupt emperor and replace him with a peasant who understands the people. When she returns to her village, she confronts the baron alone and beheads him because he drafted the village boys and terrorized village so while he enjoyed the rich life. Afterwards, she returns to her husband’s parents to fulfill her filial duties by doing farm work, housework, and bearing more sons.

      As a conclusion, Kinston says that she and the woman warrior are not so different. “What we have in common are the words at our backs. The idioms forrevenge are ‘report a crime’ and ‘report to five families.’ The reporting is the vengeance—not the beheading, not the gutting, but the words. And I have so many words—‘chink’ words and ‘gook’ words too—that they do not fit on my skin.” (Kingston 53). Using her talent with words and talk story, Kingston will be a woman warrior and fight against prejudices against women and races that threaten the welfare of the people. 

      How Does Maxine Hong Kingston’s Fa Mu Lan differ from the traditional Fa Mu Lan? How are they the same?

Jamilah: Woman Warrior, White Tigers

In the second chapter, White Tigers, Kingston relates herself to Fau Mu Lan. She believes she is this great female warrior taking revenge on everyone. At the age of seven she wonders around and comes across an old couple and they ask her to stay for fifteen years of training to become a great warrior, and she does. She learns the dragon, she traines on the mountain of the white tigers and fended for herself, etc. Kingston lerned that her brother, and husband were drafted into war and she wanted to defend them. She returns home and learns of her faher going to battle. Se has decided to take his place and her parents tattoo her back "we are going to carve revenge on your back...we'll write out oaths and names. wherever you will go, whatever happens to you, people will know our sacrifice...she meant that evenif I got killed, people could use my dead body for a weapon(34)".  In this journey she seemed to immortalize herself. She was trained to be a warrior, which was unrealstic. She became a man (dressing in mens armor/taking her fathers place in war disguised by jst tieing her hair up), which is unrealistic. She gav herself such a presence and aora that the rabbit simply threw itself into the fire b/c it knew that's what she wanted it to do(demanding and powerful w/o saying a word), which is unrealstic. "The rabbit and i studied each other...it turned its face towards me and jumped into the fire...I ate it, knowing the rabbit had sacrificeditself for me. It had made me a gift of meat(26)". Kingston goes on to say that as she was about to leave for war a man joined her, then she mounted her horse and a rider from miles away came to join her, then entire village joined(and she was picky in who she chose), which again is unrealistic. "When I opened my mouth, the songs poured out and were loud enough for the whole encampment to hear; my army streched out for a mile(37)". She prides herself on being a fierce leader and wining battles and taking her revenge. Later in the chapter she finds herself losing her "manlyness" and becoming a woman again. This is where she gets captured in the woods and gets defeated. "It was during this lonely time. when any high cry made the milk spill from my breasts, that I got careless...springing off rom behind the branches came the enemy...they pinned me to the earth...(41)". If she was such a great warrior and trained for fifteen years then her sudden defeat is unrealistic. She says " I learned to make my mind large, as the universe is large, so there is no room for paradoxes(29)". Women were trained to be a wife or a slave. Here she is defying that and thinking outside the box, which is thinking like a man or a woman who does not want to be married.

Towards the end of Kingstons story, the narrative becomes cartoon-like:
"who are you? What do you want?"
"I want your life in payment.."
"I haven't done anything to you..."
"I am a female avenger. Regret what you have done before i kill you."
"I don't know what you're talking about"
Then she shows him her breasts and since he is amazed by it, this is when she gets a chance to kill him.
Question: Why does Kigston end the story this way and what does it mean? Is this the end of her story? Is she poking fun at herself?