Raw Draft

           Maxine Hong Kingston’s style moves that she uses to fill in the gaps of “The Ballad of Fa Mu Lan” make her heroine seem less heroic. Some of these moves are the lack of the choices given to the narrator – everyone else makes up her mind for her and she is okay with that, how the narrator is treated as an object and tool by the other characters and does everything for other people, and success in war coming from both her expert training and magical equipment. *NEED – EXPAND CLAIM FURTHER + GIVE EVIDENCE??*

            The narrator seems like less of a hero because she is given no choices – others make choices for her. Although she does volunteer to go to war in her father’s place (Hong Kingston, 34) it is not as much a choice as an obligation; she has been prepped for this her whole life, as exemplified when the narrator’s father says “You knew from her birth she would be taken (Hong Kingston, 22). It is her birthright so really her volunteering for her father is merely superficial.

            Another way that others make choices for her is when her parents marry her off without her consent, albeit to a childhood friend (Hong Kingston, 31). But rather than retaliating, which she hypothetically could with her amount of training, she is submissive and goes along with being forcibly married.

            In contrast with her being forced to go to battle, she is also forced to return to being “a wife and a slave” (Hong Kingston, 20). When she gets home from battle she says to her parents-in-law “I will stay with you, doing farmwork and housework, and giving you more sons” (Hong Kingston, 45). The certainty with which she uses the word “will” has the dutiful feeling that her going to war does. She has no other options at this point than to become a housewife, despite her victory in war. It is pretty insulting that someone who was supposedly such a hero in war should have to succumb to such a hapless future, yet she does not protest. So although everyone else is deciding her fate for her, she never fights back. A real hero would, because heroes make their own choices and are masters of their own fates.

            In addition to letting others make choices for her, the narrator also seems to be less of a hero in the way she is treated like an object/tool by others. An example of this is how no one seems to care if she lives or dies as long as she serves her purpose, like in the part “She meant that even if I got killed, the people could use my dead body for a weapon” (Hong Kingston, 34). No one, even her parents, is worried whether the narrator lives or dies as long as she serves her purpose. They look at her as an object, as an asset, not as a human being. But also, they don’t care if she dies as long as it doesn’t inconvenience them. This is demonstrated where the old woman says “If you go now, you will be killed, and you’ll have wasted seven and a half years of our time” (Hong Kingston, 32). She is not concerned about the narrator dying because she actually cares about her, but because it would inconvenience the old woman.

            Her being married off (Hong Kingston, 31) is a less extreme form of objectification but still worth noting. She is married off as if she is an object, or a product in a store, not a human being with feelings and opinions of her own. So overall the narrator is dehumanized and treated instead as a mere object, which makes her seem less heroic because heroes should not be looked down upon, they should be looked up to. *MIGHT NEED SOME MORE EVIDENCE FOR THIS POINT.*

            Another reason that she seems less heroic is that she is completely prepared and equipped to go to war. Firstly, she has received state of the art training from two old people her entire childhood. They have transformed her from the clumsy novice she was at the beginning, “When I stepped carelessly and mussed a line, my feet kicked up new blends of earth colors, but the old man and old woman walked so lightly that their feet never stirred the designs by a needle” (Hong Kingston, 21) into this graceful, agile being, “I could jump twenty feet into the air from a standstill, leaping like a monkey over the hut” (Hong Kingston, 23). The original Fa Mu Lan, on the other hand, had absolutely no preparation, and was thrust into battle – and survived – as the clumsy novice the narrator of “White Tigers” was as a child.

            Not only was she better prepared, but the narrator of “White Tigers” also had more resources, like a perfect horse with a perfect saddle (Hong Kingston, 35) and her own army (Hong Kingston, 36). Fa Mu Lan, meanwhile, does not have her own army to defend and support her, and must buy a cheap horse and saddle from market rather than having hers miraculously gifted to her. Indeed, it is a recurring theme that the narrator of “White Tigers” is just given things that Fa Mu Lan actually had to work for. Another example is the magical weapons that she masters during training and brings with her to war, such as “I could point at the sky and make a sword appear, a silver bolt in the sunlight, and control its slashing with my mind” (Hong Kingston, 33). She literally has a magical indestructible sword, with which she foils giants and other foes. As far as we know, Fa Mu Lan had to deal with whatever makeshift weapons she could fine, and yet she survived the war. It seems far less of an achievement that the narrator of “White Tigers” survived the war considering that she had so much help, whereas Fa Ma Lan seems more heroic for surviving war singlehandedly with no experience. Heroes are people who are special, who work hard so that they can do what ordinary people cannot. Yet any person given the resources and training that the girl was given could probably survive the war. So there really is nothing special, and by extension nothing heroic, about her.

            Going off of the idea of her not being special, she may seem special while in battle, but once she returns home she takes up “farmwork and housework” (Hong Kingston, 45), very mundane, average tasks. While at war she did seem special in that she was the general of the army that defeated many opponents and unseated the tyrannical emperor to replace him with one of their own, when you think about it all of her success came from other people. She would not have gone to war if it hadn’t been for the pressure of her family, and without her training, equipment, and army, she wouldn’t have lasted the night. Heroes have something special about them that is not material, that is beneath the surface. Yet strip the narrator of everything superficial and she is no one, no one at all. We know nothing about her interests and hobbies, about who she is, about what makes her special. Aside from a few bizarre personal details like those about her period, we only know about her what the other characters in the book know about her. There is nothing special about her that is not skin-deep, but everything about Fa Mu Lan is special – her heroic nature in taking the place of her dad, her singlehandedly surviving the war, etc. And yet we know less about her – the storytelling is far vaguer than that of “White Tigers.”

*NOT REALLY SURE WHERE TO GO FROM HERE – WHETHER I SHOULD BRING IN MORE IDEAS OR MORE EXAMPLES OR MORE SOMETHING ELSE?*

*ALSO – I NEED TO BRING IN “THE BALLAD OF FA MU LAN” MORE, USING ACTUAL TEXTUAL EVIDENCE FROM IT IN ORDER TO COMPARE ITS STYLE WITH THAT OF “WHITE TIGERS.”*