Literary Analysis Of The Woman
Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior presents the struggles of a Chinese-American woman growing up as she attempts to reconcile two cultures, a female
devaluing Chinese culture and influences by an American culture, while developing her own identity as a Chinese-American. Using William R. Schroeder's model of interpretation will help to define the struggles and complications experienced by Kingston as relevant to my interpretation.
Schroeder’s model of interpretation presents eight interpretive elements: explicit statements, imagery, narrative point of view, plot/action, characters, notable effects, horizons, and world. The most important interpretive elements used in my ...
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adequacy, completeness, depth, sensitivity, and integratedness. Of these, my interpretation best
fulfills the evaluative criteria of consistency, completeness, and integratedness.
It is evident that the narrator, Kingston, has many conflicts with what is being taught at home and what is experienced in the American society. Through the myth and reality stories Kingston tells, she establishes her beliefs and values of the Chinese culture and contrasts them with the expectations of the American culture. The older generation, her mother, uses their native language to instill the traditional values and the idea of becoming an individual - a
“woman warrior.” However, the American culture creates a struggle in balancing these two contradicting forces of being traditional and having a sense of identity.
The first “talk-story” creates the basis of the Chinese traditional values Kingston encounters at home. This story describes the outcast of the ...
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woman, Fa Mu Lan. I would have to grow up a warrior woman” (p.20). She also recognizes her mother as being a warrior. Brave Orchid, Kingston’s mother, was an important figure in her village back in China; she had attained a doctor’s degree.
“I’m never getting married, never!”
“Who’d want to marry you anyway? Noisy. Talking like a duck. Disobedient.
Messy. And I know about college. What makes you think you’re the first one to
think about college? I was a doctor. I went to medical school... I don’t see why you can’t be a doctor like me.” (p.202)
Brave Orchid hints to her daughter that getting married is ...
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"Literary Analysis Of The Woman." Essayworld.com. July 29, 2006. Accessed November 22, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Literary-Analysis-Of-The-Woman/49905.
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