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Song For A Barbarian Reed Pipe Essay

444 Words2 Pages

The narrator and main character, Kingston, underwent a huge arc throughout the book, especially in the last chapter "A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe." In the beginning of the story, Kingston talks about how her mother cut her tongue in order to avoid her getting tongue tied and keeping her quiet. Throughout her childhood, Kingston was a very shy and reserved girl. She was unpopular and didn't say much. Seemingly because of the fact that her mother cut her tongue, Kingston was alienated, shy and quiet throughout her childhood.

The silence Kingston experienced as a child was a reflection of the Chinese culture and their view of women. The Chinese culture seemed to always try to silence women. If women tried to be successful they would be persecuted, …show more content…

She says that she always felt that she had words kept in that couldn't get out, and in this chapter we see two instances where Kingston seems to verbally lash out. The first instance is when Kingston is a child at school, and she lashes out at a girl who is more quiet than her, trying to get her to talk. The lack of verbal language is very frustrating to Kingston, which is ironic because of how shy and reserved she was.

The next time we see Kingston change from her quiet nature is in her adult life when she blames her mother for her problems. She lashed out at her mother and says that she is responsible for many of the problems she experienced in her life. In her rant, she also brings up that her mother did not do a very good job of cutting her tongue to make her quiet, because she felt that sometimes when she had something to say and it was stuck inside of her, it ended up coming out in the wrong way, in a much more hostile way than she would have liked.

While the transition from silence to speaking seems insignificant, it is a huge change in the character as well as the resolution to the story. Throughout her life Kingston seemed to be confined to silence, her voice not being heard and character not being understood. By finding her voice, Kingston was finally able to convey her feelings and develop her true vision of the world as a

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