To begin with, Songnan transitions throughout her story with a variety of flashbacks that corresponds with Birdie’s problematic situations she seems to continuously cause upon herself. The structure of “Waxen Wings” brings together Birdie’s hopes and desires in past tense. Moreover, Songnan orders her subjects according to Birdie’s maturity. She writes of Birdie at “ten years old”, to her middle and high schools years, to finally, age 26. The reader gets the idea Birdie has learned from her mistakes, nevertheless more incidents are depicted.
Literary Analysis of “Waxen Wings” Failure is a grueling issue to consider even if it’s a natural way of life. Ha Songnan’s “Waxen Wings” expresses to never give up on your dreams because sometimes it takes failure to discover achievement. The nameless South Korean girl, “Birdie”, travels back to her childhood. As a child and even as an adult she has a brilliant imagination that consists of flying; yet, imagination is a ignominy in her culture.
Towards the beginning of the book when the woman is packing bags for the internment camp the narrator describes the multiculturalism existing in their house by saying, “ She carried the tiny bonsai tree out into the yard and set it down… She wrapped up his stamp collection and the wooden Indian with the long headdress he had won at the Sacramento State Fair” (Otsuka 7). Otsuka purposefully places the bonsai tree, which represents the family’s Japanese heritage, and the stamps and Indian doll, which represents the family’s American culture, next to each other to create a juxtaposition between the different cultures. In the moments before the internment camp, both cultures are present, in contrast to after the family’s return from the internment camp, where the two cultures separately appear to show how Japanese-American families were forced to choose between the two. In the chapters told from the children’s point of view, Otsuka illustrates the idea of assimilation as more of a
This complicates even further the girl’s way of life as she tries to relate to the American identity. The friendship between the two girls originated in school. The Japanese girl does not seem to stop her ways of relating to Americans. She considers Americans more friends than her Japanese contemporaries. However, Denise who is her American friend accuses her of not being loyal to their friendship (Okita 1).
The Bloody Chamber and The Collector are both influenced by variations of the French folktale Bluebeard, Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber based on Charles Perrault’s Barbe bleue (Bluebeard), and John Fowles The Collector influenced by the opera Bluebeard 's Castle by Béla Bartók. Both The Collector and The Bloody Chamber use captivity narratives to drive the plot with the clear influence of the Bluebeard tale. In this is essay I will analyse how in both of the texts the female protagonists become surveyors of themselves, and how the surveyor within herself is male. I will further apply my understanding of Laura Mulvey’s theory of the male gaze to critically analyse both texts, additionally demonstrating the techniques used within both and
Wang Xiefeng is described in a poem with “eyes like a painted phoenix, eyebrows like willow-leaves”(Xueqin 549) and wearing a “chignon enclosed in a circlet of gold filigree and clustered pearls. It was fastened with a pin embellished with flying phoenixes, from whose beaks pearls were suspended on tiny chains” (Xueqin, 549). The poem used to describe Wang Xifeng’s face paints a picture of a gentle beauty and contrasts the behavior of Wang Xifeng. It makes the readers feel as if she is really ethereal and the comparisons
In contrast to Juliana, Robert Childan continuously struggles with his feelings and emotions for the Japanese throughout the novel. He is torn between disliking them, because he must obey, and idolizing their absolute power, “Life is short, he thought. Art, or something not life, is long, stretching out endless, like a concrete worm. Flat, white, unsmoothed by any passage over or across it. Here I stand.
In David Hwang’s, M. Butterfly, he forms, links and connections between imperialism, racism, and sexism in a love affair go between a French diplomat named Rene Gallimard and a Chinese male actor named Song Liling. Gallimard wants to have Song, who is his fantasy, a stereotypical Asian woman who is beautiful, submissive and will do anything for him. It is because of this fantasy, that he ignores all evidence that would lead to him discovering that Song is a man and a spy for the Chinese government. Throughout the story we see the destructive power of thinking in “two theoretical opposites…” that “are strictly defined and set off against one another”, East vs West, Love vs Cruelty but most importantly, Reality vs. Fantasy. At these very
Gallimard is a French diplomat advising on the Vietnam War. He uses Song’s opinion (the opinion of one Chinese woman who is a spy and a man) as a basis for judging all Asian people. He bases foreign diplomacy decisions on what she does and says. For example, he advises the American diplomats “The Orientals simply want to be associated with whoever shows the most strength and power.’’ (Hwang 37) This information is wrong, and he gets fired from the Embassy.
In the contemporary literary context, while discussing mythical characters in numerous hues and forms, human and animal, natural and supernatural as they coexist in the postcolonial texts, the element of camouflage, deception, disguise, changing selves, and shapeshifting become significantly
Boursicot believed they were in love, and that their romantic and subtly forbidden past was a something out of a fairytale. Two people from two different aspects of the world, from two cultures meeting each other and falling in love. This is what Gallimard was based on, almost this hopeless romanic stereotype who need the woman that confirms to the oriental submissive stereotype. He relies on Song while believing that she relies on him, for he can not see the truth. Gallimard had a way of ignoring his doubts, and this affected both his relationship with Song.
Through the interactive orals, I have come to appreciate the purpose of the book, Wonderful Fool. At first, I considered Endo’s work to be a journey of a Christ-like character whose foolishness and love for others inspires them to be better. What I didn’t recognize was the huge element of a cultural clash in the novel. It was pointed out to me during Jonathan’s presentation that Gaston, who represents France and in general a westernized world, comes into a now economically thriving post WW2 Japan that still has a high mistrust of foreigners. As a result of this, Gaston often comes off as offensive to the Japanese culture, but only because of his ignorance.
Everyone has his or her own fantasy and dreams since all of us have something that we want to possess such as power, money, skill. However, we cannot always achieve our goals and expectation in our real life since it is impossible, so we probably will choose to do it in our fantasy, which is in our mind. In the play M. Butterfly, the author talks a love story, which based on Gallimard’s imagination. Gallimard wants to fall in love with a perfect woman who is submissive and delicate, and then he meets Song who is a smart spy that pretends as a woman deliberately. From a man’s view, Song knows what kinds of woman that Gallimard is interested in based on Gallimard’s stereotype to oriental woman, and Song can play the role as the perfect woman
The poem begins with the speaker looking at a photograph of herself on a beach where the “sun cuts the rippling Gulf in flashes with each tidal rush” (Trethewey l. 5-7). The beach is an area where two separate elements meet, earth and water, which can represent the separation of the different races that is described during the time that her grandmother was alive and it can also represent the two races that are able to live in harmony in the present day. The clothing that the two women wear not only represent how people dressed during the different time periods, but in both the photographs of the speaker and her grandmother, they are seen standing in a superman-like pose with their hands on “flowered hips” (Trethewey l. 3,16). The flowers on the “bright bikini” (Trethewey l. 4) are used to represent the death of segregation, similar to how one would put flowers on a loved one’s grave, and on the “cotton meal sack dress” (Trethewey l. 17) it is used to symbolize love and peace in a troubled society.
“When I discover who I am, I will be free.” ~Ralph Ellison With a cultural identity as unclear as her own, Sarah Howe grew up questioning the human condition, specifically regarding the idea of belonging. Yet despite her great efforts in discovering what it means to have a bicultural heritage, her journey of understanding is forever ongoing.
