Woman Warrior Character Analysis

Clash Before Harmony
“Whenever she had to warn us about life, my mother told stories that ran like this one, a story to grow up on. She tested out strength to establish realities. Those in the emigrant generation who could not reassert brute survival died young and far from home. Those of us in the first American generations have had to figure out how the invisible world the emigrants built around our childhoods fits in solid America”(5). Maxine Hong Kingston’s Woman Warrior tells the story of Maxine’s childhood as the first American-born child in her Chinese family. In her transition from her Chinese household to the American culture and world around her, Maxine finds it difficult to fit in with both cultures. In Woman Warrior, Kingston uses
Maxine’s struggle to makes adjustments when caught between Chinese and American cultures to convey that those caught between colliding cultures will often experience frustration in their search for a sense of place that can isolate them before they are able to find harmony.
The vast differences between Chinese and American cultures create a sense of collision and conflict between the two worlds. In Chinese culture, there is a large emphasis placed on quietness and secrecy. When Maxine begins to challenge this by telling her mother small secrets every night, her mother gets angry with her, saying, “‘I can’t stand this whispering,’ she said looking right at me, stopping her squeezing. ‘Senseless gabbings every night. I wish you would stop. Go away and work. Whispering, whispering, making no sense. Madness. I don’t feel like hearing your craziness’”(200). The word “gabbings” suggests that Maxine’s words are meaningless and unimportant, creating the sense that she is going on incessantly. The word “madness” shows how extremely this irritates Maxine’s mother, evoking an image of foolishness and silly behavior coming from Maxine. Maxine’s mother, whose values are in accordance with Chinese culture, represents the old world in this interaction with Maxine. Her actions and words reflect the value placed on quietness and secrecy found in Chinese culture. This value is very different from American culture, in which loudness and talkative behavior are encouraged. Referring to Americans as “ghosts,” Maxine describes their behavior by saying that “Ghosts are noisy and full of air; they talk during meals. They talk about anything”(183-184). The word “ghosts” evokes an image of people who are not truly real, and are only semi-people. The image of Americans as ghosts emphasizes the disdain with which Maxine and her family regard Americans, and how they do not view them as real people. These noisy, talkative ghosts are very different from the quiet Chinese, a difference that creates confusion and frustration for Maxine when she must switch between her old world at home of quiet Chinese values, and the loud American world she encounters at school.
The confusion caused by the colliding cultures Maxine faces leads her to struggle with her identity, mainly in the form of silencing herself. When Maxine left her Chinese household to begin at an American school, she begins to face difficulties regarding adjusting to her new environment, with new expectations, practices, and types of communication. Maxine struggles in this new culture, especially in ways surrounding the use of her voice. When describing her school experience, Maxine says, “During the first silent year I spoke to no one at school, did not ask before going to the lavatory, and flunked kindergarten. [...] I enjoyed the silence. At first it did not occur to me I was supposed to talk or pass kindergarten. [...] It was when I found out I had to talk that school became a misery, that the silence became a misery. I did not speak and felt bad each time that I did not speak”(165-166). The word “misery” invokes a feeling of deep sadness and distress, as though nothing could be worse for Maxine than the thought of breaking her silence and speaking up. The word “silence” suggests that there was a complete absence of sound, that Maxine was not just quiet, but truly did not have any desire to speak at all. Maxine’s period of silence in school is reflective of her Chinese upbringing, with silence and secrecy being encouraged from a young age. This is explained by traditional Chinese and other Asian styles of learning, in which “the traditional curriculum emphasizes listening, writing, reading, and memorization. Talking is simply not a focus, and is even discouraged”(Cain 184). When Maxine begins at American school, she is thrown into a loud world she does not understand, and refuses to change her ways of communication to fit with the American style. However, when she begins to adjust to the differences by using her voice more, she finds problems back in her old Chinese culture.
Maxine’s struggle to adjust to different types of communication causes extreme frustration that manifests itself in an outburst at her family, isolating her from her Chinese side.
Before Maxine yells at her family, she describes her vocal cords as "taught to snapping." She tries to tell her mother a confession every day, perhaps to ease her vocal cords off slowly and gradually, but when her mother tells her she doesn't want Maxine to continue telling her secrets each night Maxine stops. As she grows increasingly frustrated at her situation, the man sitting in the laundry comes in and sets her over the edge. She says, "One night when the laundry was so busy that the whole family was eating dinner there, crowded around the little round table, my throat burst open. I stood up, talking and burbling"(200-201). By describing her patience breaking as her throat bursting open, it emphasizes the extent to which Maxine feels she needs to use her voice. She describes her actions as "talking and burbling," creating the sense that she is overflowing with words, unsure of exactly where they will lead her as more and more come out. In finally saying what she needs to say to her family, Maxine shows that she is no longer the silent girl, similar to the one from her school. In kindergarten, Maxine does not speak to anyone and does not feel the need to. However, as Maxine grows older she shows that she now feels as though she cannot wait another moment silently because she has so much to say. Maxine becomes outspoken and loud, instead of silent and submissive, something that angers her mother, yet relieves Maxine. Maxine's outburst in which her "throat [bursts] open" shows that as Maxine grows up and becomes her own person, she makes a shift from the old customs of her Chinese family to the customs of the new world of America, which isolates herself from her parents and their adherence to
customs.
Although Maxine’s outburst isolates her from her parents at first, she eventually learns to embrace both Chinese and American culture. After telling her mother’s story of a trip to the theater that ended in an attack by bandits, Maxine goes on to tell the story of Ts’ai Yen, who was kidnapped by barbarians and found a place in their culture by singing a song that she brought back to China when she was taken back from the bandits. When explaining how Ts’ai Yen brought the song from her old culture to new, Maxine says that “It translated well”(209). “Translates” suggests that not only was the song was taken from the old culture and expressed in the new one, but that it was moved from one world to another. Maxine herself was able to move from one world to another, from her household’s Chinese customs to the American world around her. After struggling with adapting to each culture throughout her childhood, Maxine uses her statement that “it translated well” to mean that, like Ts’ai Yen, she was able to find harmony between the two worlds.
As a result of the conflict and collision between the old world and new world, Maxine struggles with confusion surrounding the adjustment she must make to each world. The frustration she reacts with towards this confusion isolates her from both worlds before she can find harmony between the two cultures, something that Kingston uses in Woman Warrior to highlight in the experiences of immigrants caught between clashing cultures.