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.
Thanks for posting, John. I was intrigued by your indication about how stubborn the west is in its misconceptions about the east. I think that one must realize that there is a lot at stake in the power dynamics that west has created in its era of empire. To be sure, not each individual has as much to gain from these stereotypes, but it is interesting to note how pervasive these ideas are.
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