M. Butterfly Ending Reflection

Gallimard’s performative suicide is one of the best possible endings for M. Butterfly, by David Henry Hwang, despite not being the most cheerful or positive. In a quick recap of the end of the text, Gallimard is back in the prison cell, talking about his misconcepted view of the Eastern world. While doing so, he puts on the Butterfly costume, discusses his love for Song, and then kills himself like the original Butterfly.

I thought the ending was fitting (even though some may complain that it wasn’t a “feel-good” ending)  because the purpose of Hwang’s work was to demonstrate the West’s skewed representation of the East. Through Gallimard’s suicide, we see how Western culture is stubborn and unwilling to accept the truth about the East even when confronted with the truth. We see the West’s opinions of the East in Gallimard’s words, when he says, “There is a vision of the orient that I have. Of slender women in cheongsams and kimonos who die for the love of unworthy foreign devils. Who are born and raised to be the perfect women” (863). Obviously at the time, Gallimard, and consequently the West, had strange standards and opinions of Asian women.

When Gallimard reveals that he knew about Song’s true identity, but continues to deny reality and reside in his fantasy instead, he shows the West’s inflexible stereotypes. In this sense, I thought that by showing Gallimard’s stubbornness, Hwang was implying how the West know that their assumptions are racist yet continue to believe in them.

Through Gallimard’s misconceptions and thoughts, Hwang establishes a basis for the racist Western world that allows the reader to prepare themselves for the ultimate message. Gallimard, unable to relinquish his love, begins to dress up as the butterfly so that he can pursue his fantasy by himself. In order to experience the beautiful sacrifice and the original purity of Madame Butterfly’s sacrifice, he plans on re-enacting the scene using himself as the sacrifice. In this twisted way, Gallimard his keeping his ideals of the East alive by killing himself.

At the very end, when Song looks down on Gallimard’s dead body, the sexism and racism that Gallimard so strongly believed in was the cause of his downfall as the roles were reversed. As an Asian, I was a bit disappointed by the ending because although the West was ultimately defeated because of their racist misconceptions of the East, they were unable to reconcile these stereotypes, even until death.

Notes from the Underground: Thoughts

I understood from the first few pages of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground that it was not a normal book, nor was it a particularly happy or easy to read book. The opening lines of these notes begin with, “I am a sick man... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man” (3). Contrary to other pieces of literature where the narrator or the main character has at least one redeeming feature, allowing the reader to sympathize or “root for” the hero, the author of the diary begins by insulting himself. He claims he was a “spiteful official” in his youth and that he “was rude and took pleasure in being so”. Here was a man that loved being mean. Interesting, but not enough to think about for more than a brief moment (there are plenty of people who love to be mean).

What really struck me as odd was the next page, when the narrator admits, “...continually, even in the moment of the acutest spleen, I was inwardly conscious with shame that I was not only not a spiteful but not even an embittered man, that I was simply scaring sparrows at random and amusing myself by it” (4). He claims that he was lying about being spiteful out of spite, but that he isn’t sorry about lying. What kind of narrator lies to his reader, then directly tells them that he doesn’t care about their opinions? Personally, I like this fourth wall breaking narrative, as all these small disruptions make it easier and more interesting to listen to the narrator’s thoughts.

Another point that I found interesting was the author’s use of contradictory statements. Besides the initial lie in the opening pages, he also talks about how living “longer than forty years is bad manners, is vulgar, immoral” (5) and that those who lie beyond 40 are fools. He then says that he will live to 80, and that his intelligence is unparalleled. It’s these odd, contradictory statements that make his writing interesting, as you have to think about whether what he says is intelligent or the ravings of a madman.

In chapter three, the man moves on to talking about how he cannot act on anything, which is the reason why he is stuck in the underground. Surely this can’t be true, seeing as how the man is writing this confession/diary and talking about himself (allegedly the greatest pleasure one can have?).

“But it is just in that cold, abominable half despair, half belief, in that conscious burying oneself alive for grief in the underworld for forty years, in that acutely recognised and yet partly doubtful hopelessness of one’s position, in that hell of unsatisfied desires turned inward, in that fever of 15 oscillations, of resolutions determined for ever and repented of again a minute later—that the savour of that strange enjoyment of which I have spoken lies.” (14-15).

The reason that he cannot act on anything is because he tends to think about the situation and his actions again and again, finding flaws with every possible action. Although other people think him stupid because of his inactivity, he knows that he is the intelligent one because taking an action would lead to the true foolish conclusion. His logic made me wonder that surely by not taking an action, he is choosing to take an action. Either way, there can be no ideal option for the narrator.

In these first twenty pages, it’s interesting to see how this man thinks: sporadically, in parables and paradoxes, and with cynical comedy. His musings also helped me realize a bit more about how and what I think about existentialism: getting too caught up in the ravings of an existentialist will only lead to a confused mind and a strangely empty conclusion.