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Succinct summary of The Woman Warrior
The conflict in the woman warrior by maxine hong kingston
The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts
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Recommended: Succinct summary of The Woman Warrior
A Short Analysis of Ghosts in Woman Warrior In Chapter 3 of Woman Warrior, Kingston portrays “ghosts” as people who she does not quite associate herself with directly. She argues, “America has been full of machines and ghosts” (96), and then goes on to classify the many different types of these “ghosts”. Thus, at this point in the book, ghosts appear to be actual people. There are “Taxi Ghosts, Bus Ghosts, Police Ghosts, Fire Ghosts, Meter Reader Ghosts, Tree Trimming Ghosts, Five-and-Dime Ghosts” (97). These titles act as ways to classify the Americans around her. These people are ghosts because they represent a culture she does not feel completely connected to as a Chinese-American girl. The characters in the story actually identified as people all seem to be the narrator’s family who are Chinese. This becomes more clear when Kingston goes on to write, Once upon a time the world was so thick with ghosts, I could hardly breathe; I could hardly walk, limping my way around the White Ghosts and their cars. There were Black ghosts too, but they were open eyed and full of laughter, more distinct than White Ghosts. (97) …show more content…
As the author describes trying to understand the cultures around her, she uses the term “ghosts” to separate people whom her mother does not feel connected to culturally from what she presumes to be the Chinese world. This separation also seems to carry a fear with it. Just as one expects to be scared of a traditional ghost or spirit, Kingston describes being frightened and running from the “Newsboy Ghost” (97-98). However, she also describes imitating this ghost: “We collected old Chinese newspapers and trekked about the house and yard . . .We made up our own English. (97) Thus, the ghosts, though representing fear of American culture, also represented a way for the author and other Chinese children to navigate and understand American
Ghosts, both figurative and literal, are very common in the Joy Luck Club and are a recurring theme in the book. The mothers of The Joy Luck Club were all raised in traditional Chinese households, which has influenced them to have deeper feelings about ghosts. Mentally, the term ghost is used to describe people who have become a shell of their former selves and rarely speak or do anything. Physically, ghost is used to describe the spirit of the dead. This is the basis of the mothers and others to be scared of the thought of becoming a ghost figuratively and literally. Christianity is the basis of physical fear of ghosts and traditional Chinese beliefs cause the mental fear of ghosts, this stimulates the thought of the afterlife to be
The definition of the “ghost” is a shadow which wandering among or haunting other people. The villagers called her aunt a ghost because they are scared of her behavior. The life that they know had been attacked. Kingston uses the harsh responses of the villagers indirectly exposes her aunt ‘s challenge to the society.
The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston portrays the complicated relationship between her and her mother, while growing up as a Chinese female in an American environment. She was surrounded by expectations and ideals about the inferior role that her culture imposed on women. In an ongoing battle with herself and her heritage, Kingston struggles to escape limitations on women that Chinese culture set. However, she eventually learns to accept both cultures as part of who she is. I was able to related to her as a Chinese female born and raised in America. I have faced the stereotypes and expectations that she had encountered my whole life and I too, have learned to accept both my Chinese and American culture.
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James continues to stir up an immense amount of controversy for such a short novel. Making a definite, educated decision on the actual truth considering the countless inquiries that develop while reading this story proves more difficult than winning a presidential election. That being understood, taking one particular side on any argument from a close reading of the story seems impossible, because the counter argument appears just as conceivable. Any side of the controversy remains equally disputable considerably supported by textual evidence from the novel. One issue which, like the rest, can be answered in more than one ways is why Mrs. Grose believes the Governess when she tells her about her ghost encounters. Usually one would second-guess such outlandish stories as the ones that the governess shares throughout the story, yet Mrs. Grose is very quick to believe our borderline-insane narrator. One of the explanations for such behavior could be the underlying fact that Mrs. Grose and the governess have a similar socio-economic background, therefore making them somewhat equals even if the governess does not always seem to think that way. This fact makes them susceptible to trusting and believing each other, and to believing that the ghosts are there, for the people that the ghosts are presenting used to be servants and therefore from a similar socio-economic background. To add on to that, Bruce Robbins proposes in his Marxist criticism of The Turn of the Screw that the idea of a ghost is synonymous to that of a servant, subconsciously making the two lower-class workers of Bly more vulnerable to believe that the ghosts were real; in other words, servants we...
The first quality I share with the Hard-Bitten Ghost is that of negativity. Upon first meeting the narrator, the Ghost rants about heaven, saying, “You can’t eat the fruit and you can’t drink the water,” exhibiting his blindness to the heavenly
Given the title of this work, you may mistakenly believe (as did at least one prior owner of the book copy I had read from, if their annotations are any indication) that this is a literal investigation into all things paranormal and society’s investment of that which goes bump in the night. In “Ghostly Matters: Hauntings and the Sociological Imagination”, Avery F. Gordon offers academics and ethnographers – those whose profession it is to unearth the secreted relationships between the signifier and the signified, the subject and object, the real and unreal - a disturbing ghost story that should leave those of us in the field who came claim these titles with both the deepest of darkest chills and, through a new method of revealing and acknowledging the ghosts we feel, the hope for something akin to redemption. (In this way, perhaps, Gordon accomplishes many of the same feats as Stephen King and Edgar Allen Poe).
Next I want to introduce to you The Banshee. The Banshee is believed to be ghost woman seen mostly in Irish Folklore. The Banshee is depicted "in Various versions which have been described, from a woman with long, red hair and very pale skin to an older woman with stringy, gray hair, rotten teeth and fiery red eyes.” (darksang.com)
...l evidence that the ‘ghosts' exist and no other witnesses. Although we only have the governesses word, her rational account of the events is convincing, especially when she suggests herself, that her suspicious behaviour and paranoia do seem absurd, and even insane in the normal course of things. It is only as the story draws to a close and the children's disconcerting behaviour can be seen as a reaction to the governess's own actions, that her story loses conviction. There obviously were inappropriate goings on at Bly before she came, and the uncle's aversion to any involvement with the children is strange, creating a mysterious aura around the story. But it is James' clever ambiguity throughout the whole novel that makes it impossible in the end to say for sure whether the ghosts were real or whether it was an allegorical tale about the corruption of innocence.
aranormal activity has been a cause of fear and excitement throughout history. The unknown attracts the curiosity from those who wonder whether the supernatural is real or a figment of the imagination. Ghosts are one of the supernatural beings whose existence is questioned every day. Many want to deny the existence of ghosts because they are terrified of other phantoms who may exist and ignore the evidence that has been brought forth throughout the years. However, ghosts are supernatural pheromones whose existence still impacts today’s society.
Ghost is something that some believe and some won't. But still most of them get frighten to some extend, when they watch terrific horror films. Perhaps it is due to the terrific sounds or special effects that imposes ones mind. But there is a specific science that has the ability to explain the concepts of the spirits or ghosts called Adhyathma (A study centered around the soul)in the Ancient Indian script. According to the teachings of the ancient scripture Bhagavad Gita, the brain (and the body in general) is only a mechanical device used by the spirit soul (the actual self). It is described that just as a passenger rides in a chariot, in the same way the spirit soul is riding in this vehicle of the body.
The word “ghost” originates from the Aged English word “gast,” and its synonyms are “soul, spirit [good or bad spirit], existence, breath,” and “demon” (etymonline.com). In the book, The Woman Warrior, that is, ironically, subtitled as Memoirs of a Girlhood Amid Ghosts, the author, Maxine Hong Kingston, uses the word “ghost” as a metaphor to typify her confusion concerning discovering a difference amid reality and unreality – the difference that divides her American present that prefers and her Chinese past that her mother, Valiant Orchid, filters into her mind across talk-stories that steadily daunt her to cross her established bounds. Ghosts, in the book, change reliant on point of view. Anybody whose deeds deviates from what is satisfactory in one area is a ghost according to the associates of that society. To Chinese people, like Valiant Orchid, Americans are ghosts. On the supplementary hand, Chinese are ghosts according to Chinese-Americans (including Kingston, who finds her past loaded alongside frightening Chinese ghosts). For Kingston, Ghosts, however, are not always scary; in fact, a little of them enthuse...
When she moves to America, her mother calls everyone who is not Chinese a “ghost,” and Kingston catches on to the saying. In an article, Lee writes, “refers to the “foreigners: when they live among the whites. Here” ghosts” mean outsiders for the Chinese” (Lee). By moving to America, Kingston views herself as being surrounded by “white ghosts,” or “gwai-lo’s” constantly throughout her everyday life. She views anything she does not quite understand or anything that frightens her as a “ghost” and because of that, all white people become ghosts in her mind. “By calling (white people) and other people of color “ghosts,” Chinese immigrants tried to claim their legitimate statues and to some extent debased the existence of others”(Lee). Through the appointing of all non-Chinese immigrants as “ghosts,” the Chinese are able to unite as living beings in a world full of the dead. They are able to categorize all unfamiliar races and skin colors that they do not understand as one group termed “ghosts.” In one excerpt, Kingston writes, “America has been full of machines and ghosts- Taxi Ghosts, Bus Ghosts, Police Ghosts, Five and Dime Ghosts. Once upon a time the world was so thick with ghosts, I could hardly breathe” (90-91). With this passage, Kingston describes the white Americans as ghosts. Because they are different from her and have different cultures and do not really interact with her, they are automatically deemed ghosts by her mother, and therefore accepted as ghosts to Kingston herself. She is living in a world full of ghosts, and it is absolutely terrifying for her. Although these ghosts are indeed alive, they are every bit as scary to her as the dead ones that haunt her through her mother’s stories. In a strange and terrifying new world, Kingston categorizes the things that scare and haunt her, under one word:
The Joy Luck Club defines a ghost as someone who has been deceased. Instead, they are a mere representation of people who cannot be talked about. Having an opinion in the Chinese culture means that you have decided to go against your elders. For example, An-mei’s mother is personified as “a ghost” in “Scar,” not because she is dead or she wants to seek vengeance, but because she has committed a shameless taboo that exiles her from her family’s home. She has married a man outside her family, who previously had children. This intolerable act causes An-Mei’s mother to be seen as unfaithful. The family bans all of An-Mei’s memories because she would be a clear disgrace to her two children, who in the future would display the same selfish behavior and cause a bad reputation to their family.
Ghosts traditionally symbolize bad omens and anything to do with evil. They are connected with demons and devils, as well as the supernatural. The ghost is us...
Ever since the start of humanity, mankind has had a fascination with the unexplained; from ghouls, werewolves, vampires, sasquatches and all things that go bump in the night. However, many of those mythical creatures being scientifically proven, ghosts elude that lucidity. Ghosts are the spirits of the dead manifesting to the living eye in a usually hazy form. This phenomena can also be felt through hearing voices or footsteps, fragrances such as perfume or being touched by the presence. The history of this kind of supernatural dates back to primitive times as well as strong beliefs attached to them. Come the present, there is much controversy. Skeptics, believers, ghost hunters and mediums all play a role in the unfolding story of what is the paranormal.