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The Monkey King's Loss Of Power: American Born Chinese By Gene Luen Yang

709 Words3 Pages

“Silly monkey. You were never out of my reach. You only fooled yourself.”. These wise words from Tze-Yo-Tzuh set the stage for The Monkey King’s nadir. In particular, on pages 76 and 77, the author portrays The Monkey King's loss of power. In turn, setting the tone for the entire storyline, single-handedly one of the most important plot points in the book. The nadir of the Monkey King’s storyline in American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang represents the rise and fall of power, which is portrayed through the use of visual rhetorical devices such as image scale and border and fill effects. This portrayal of the Monkey King’s downfall highlights the inevitability of life’s ups and downs and how it relates to the human experience. The first step …show more content…

However, he was brusquely turned down and humiliated because he was not wearing shoes. He was livid at the fact he, “A Great Monkey King”, was humiliated and proceeded to trash the entire party. This in turn led to The Monkey King starting to obsessively learn the sacred arts of kung fu. By practicing divinization, it got to the point where the Monkey King thought he was better than everyone else. As the situation was getting out of control, the supreme monk took matters into his own hands and defeated the Monkey King, in turn shattering his confidence and confining him under rocks for several …show more content…

It took several years to achieve this because The Monkey King remained in his abyss for around five centuries. Eventually, The Monkey King learned to embrace the present moment and accept his true self. This was a crucial turning point in the story of Jin. Seeing how the abyss can set stages for the entire story, it is important to understand, hitting the nadir of a story is not terrible and it can be surprisingly beneficial to the story by building a backbone for character development in the rest of the story. On page 76, Yang gave the whole panel to The Monkey King at the sacred five pillars. This is because he was trying to represent how The Monkey King felt as he reached the end of his long journey. His ego was overjoyed, and he “beat” the great monk. Page 77 shows the Monkey king returning to the earth by breaking through the panel with his cloud steed. In turn, Yang uses the visual and rhetorical device: border and fill on this tight sequence set the stage for the next scene, the defeat of The Monkey

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