Appearance and Reality in Monkey and Tartuffe

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Creator of Le Misanthrope and French playwright Jean-Baptiste Poquelin had written Tartuffe, or the Impostor during the 17th century. Among the classical stories of the Chinese literature entitled Journey to the West, otherwise known as "Monkey" is created by Chinese scholar Wu Cheng'en. The comedy Tartuffe and the Monkey by Wu Cheng’en are stories accentuating on the exploration of the concepts of appearance and reality.

Tartuffe is a simple, realistic story about understanding the real deceivers and those who are deceived in life as represented by the antagonist in the comedy named Tartuffe. In examining the entire story, there is only one deceiver in the story specifically Tartuffe. As the title character of the story, Tartuffe is highly remarkable for depicting various attitudes towards the other characters to hide his real intentions. Only the readers can truly see what was he really up to. He has tremendously played with every character in the story by hiding his true motive by means of presenting his holiness to Madame Pernelle at the beginning of the story as well as to Orgon. Orgon's two-sided character is revealed in the following lines, "some joys, it's true, are wrong in Heaven's eyes, yet Heaven's not averse to compromise... any wrongful act you care to mention, may be redeemed by purity of intention" (Lawall and Mack 360). On the other hand, the major character in the story of Wu, the Stone Monkey showed realism as they search for the Buddhist scriptures with the help of Tripitaka, Zhu Bajie and Sha Wujing or Sandy.

The stories may be derived from different periods and diverse countries however both characters of the stories showed similarity in character. The appearance of both characters, Tartuffe and the Monkey...

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...even disinherited his son for believing in Tartuffe instead of his own kin. On the other hand, the Monkey King showed candor in his dealings as he wanted to seek the Buddhist scriptures.

Examining the difference between reality and appearance is strongly manifested in this story. The author has made an impressive account of what is really happening to families whether during the earlier days or the modern times. The story of Tartuffe is a great lesson for every person that people should not be easily deceived by first impressions and the story of the Monkey King showed outspokenness along with truthfulness in intentions.

Works Cited

Kherdian, David, and Cheng'en Wu. Monkey: A Journey to the West : a Retelling of the Chinese Folk Novel. Boston: Shambhala, 2005. Print.

Lawall, Sarah N, and Maynard Mack. The Norton Anthology of World Literature. New York:

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