Personal Identity In The Woman Warrior

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Recommended: Introduction on personal identity

“They want me to participate in her punishment. And I have.”(16) There is a resounding tone of guilt and irritation in this last page of the first story for the Woman Warrior. Here the reader learns how a child can become a victim, but also involuntarily become a passive advocate of their parent’s moral choices about the past. By not speaking of her aunt or questioning her parents’ silence, Maxine becomes a part of this dead woman’s chastisement.
I find this “reverse ancestor worship” troubling and conceivably damaging. Maxine’s mother sternly lectures that the little girl must not discuss the past of her aunt with others, but now she must wrestle with trying to comprehend what lead to the woman’s death. Unfortunately for Maxine, she suddenly became a part of the punishment and had no way around this when she was young. Why would Brave Orchid tell this story to her young daughter at such an innocent age? An unnerving, fogged story like this does not essentially help an innocent child guide herself through a moral decision.
Charles Taylor has defined personal identity as; “[defined] by the commitments and identifications which provide …show more content…

In the first chapter of The Woman Warrior we open up to Maxine first beginning to grasp her own personal moral framework. Disappointingly, this “reverse ancestor worship” whitewashes stories like the one Brave Orchid shares with her daughter because Maxine now cannot reflect back on what has been shared with her. Brave Orchid’s tradition seems to be rooted in “trying to confuse their offspring… [who are] always trying to name the unspeakable”, and so Maxine (and the reader) are left to develop personal ideas about what this story should represent. And although Brave Orchid wants her child to never disrespect her family, she seems to fail to help her offspring catch a grasp of right and wrong after sharing the menacing

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