The Woman Warrior Essay, Research Paper
The Woman Warrior
The most important theme that really stood out to me was the talk stories.
The whole book mainly deals with the talk stories. The second theme that I felt
that had a major impact in this book was ghost. Ghosts have an impact because
the stories that are told about them that affect the kids resulting in their isolation
from society. These themes are very important in The Woman Warrior because
they help the narrator?s life and unite the stories of the book.
Talk stories to me, seem to have a major impact in the lives of Chinese
people. These talk stories teaches the children valuable lessons; each different
from each culture. The talk stories make the children fear or learn from the
mistakes or triumphs of the characters in the talk stories. These stories have
major impacts on the main character of The Woman Warrior. She learns what to
fear, like ghosts, and having a child without being married and also learned to
stand up to what she feared or believed in.
The story of the aunt is the first talk story we learn about in this book. The
aunt who had a child before marriage was treated as a outcast. This teaches the
girl not just to avoid getting pregnant before marriage, but to avoid embarrassing
the whole family. This story though, grows weaker for the girl as she rebel at
what her mother wants her to be. She tries to be the best she can be and looks
for her mother?s praise but all she got was ?you?re too ugly? or ?you talk like a
duck?. She starts to question these stories as these talk stories become very
confusing in the life of the girl.
The second talk story was clearly still in the mind of the girl when she grew
up. The story was about Fa Mu Lan who joined the army as a girl to rise up to be
a hero when female weren?t allowed in the army. This is good story that really
matched up to what the girl represented when she grew up. Fa Mu Lan went
against the rules of being a woman in China and triumphed to be one of the
greatest heroes of China. The girl decided to be like Fa Mu Lan and break
tradition by rebelling against her mother.
Ghosts seems to be very important in the story of this book. Ghosts plays
a major part because of the way they are used as to isolate the children or to
make them stand up against a foe. The mother told the children that in America,
anybody that is not Chinese is considered as a ghost. So naturally, the children
stay away from them and fear them. This theme also relates to the talk story
theme.
The story ?Shaman? in the book was a talk story which involved ghosts.
The mother showed how brilliant she was in school and how she didn?t fear
anything to her children. She told her children that she was the only one that
would stand up to this fat ghost and how she beat the ghost this one night when
she was attacked by one. She must be telling this story about ghost and how she
rises up against it was to impress the children that she was a new age Fa Mu Lan
and so the children would follow in her foot step.
Ghost is a major theme because of its use by the mother describing
anybody that is not Chinese. This kept her children away from other people.
This is related to Chinese villages where they want to be isolated from other
people. In America, the way the Chinese people probably done it is to stay away
from other people and not to have any contact of any sort with them. They
wanted their children to retain their culture so they scare them with that story.
These two themes provided the platform for the other themes of the novel like
mother and daughter relationship and so on. This book is very good because the
theme in it relates so much to way I was brought up with these talk stories and
ghost. It also helped the book maintain its unity because each of the stories are
completely different, but the themes help me understand how each story is
related to each other.