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A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe
《羌笛野曲》
Summary
Part 1: The Cutting of the Tongue
In this story, Kingston reveals that her mother cut her tongue. When asked why, her mother responds: “I cut it so that you would not be tongue-tied. Your tongue would be able to move in any language. You’ll be able to speak languages that are completely different from one another. You’ll be able to pronounce anything.”
Summary
Kingston believes that her mother should have cut more or should not have cut it at all, because she has “a terrible time talking.” She spoke to no one at school, “did not ask before going to the lavatory, and flunked kindergarten.”
Summary
After American school, Kingston would go to Chinese school. Here, children were not mute: Boys who were so well behaved in the American school played tricks on [the teachers] and talked back to them. The girls […] screamed and yelled during recess.
Summary
One day, a delivery boy accidentally delivers a box of pills to the laundry owned by Kingston’s parents. Her mother insists that Kingston go to the drugstore and demand reparation candy. When the druggists and clerks give candy, Kingston’s mother exclaims, See? They understand. You kids just aren’t very brave. However, Kingston knew that they did not understand and thought that her family was a bunch of beggars without a home who lived behind the laundry.
Q ： What are the different attitudes towards the wrong drug delivery concerning the druggist, mother and “I”?
• P. 348
• We were working at the laundry when a delivery boy came from the Rexall drugstore around the corner. He had a pale blue box of pills, but nobody was sick.
• Mother’s reaction:
• “That ghost! The dead ghost! How dare he come to the wrong house?”
• “Revenge. We’ve got to, avenge this wrong on our future, on our health, and on our lives. Nobody’s going to sicken my children and get away with it.”
• “You have tainted my house with sick medicine and must remove the curse with sweetness.”
• Americans:
• They thought we were beggars without a home who lived in back of the laundry. They felt sorry for us.
Part 2: The Silent Girl
Kingston despises a Chinese girl who is a year older than she is because she refuses to talk. One day, she finds herself alone with the girl in the lavatory. Kingston tells the girl, “I am going to make you talk, you sissy-girl.” No matter what she does—screams at her, pulls her hair, squeezes her face—the girl remains silent.
Even when the girl is crying, Kingston continues to berate her:“Look at you, snot streaming down your nose, and you won’t say a word to stop it. You’re such a nothing. […] Talk!” p.350-357
Afterwards, Kingston spent the next eighteen months sick in bed with a mysterious illness with no pain and no symptoms. The mental illness suddenly disappears when her mother, the doctor, tells her, “You’re ready to get up today. It’s time to get up and go to school,” and she does.
Part 3: Crazy Mary, Pee-A-Nah, and Other Stories
Part 4: Kingston’s ConfessionSo get that ape out of here. I’m going to college. And I’m not going to Chinese school anymore, […] the kids are rowdy and mean. […] And I don’t want to listen to any more of your stories; they have no logic. […] Ha! You can’t stop me from talking. You tried to cut off my tongue, but it didn’t work.
Part 5: Ts’ai Yen
In the final part of “A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe,” Kingston tells the story of Ts’ai Yen, a poetess born in A.D. 175. After captured by the Southern Hsiung-nu barbarians, she brings her songs back from the savage lands and passes down “Eighteen Stanzas for a Barbarian Reed Pipe,” a song that “Chinese sing to their own instruments.”
• Cai Wenji was an established calligrapher of her time. Her poems were noted for their sorrowful tone, parallel to her hard life. The famous guqin piece Eighteen Songs of a Nomad
Flute 胡笳十八拍 is traditionally attributed to her.
• The other two poems, both named “Poem of Sorrow and Anger” ( 悲愤诗 ), were known to be by her own
hand.
《悲愤诗》
处所多霜雪，胡风春夏起。
翩翩吹我衣，萧萧入我耳。
感时念父母，哀叹无穷已。
有客从外来，闻之常欢喜。
迎问其消息，辄后非乡里。
Poem of Sorrow and Anger
My dwelling is often covered by frost and snow,The foreign winds bring again spring and summer;They gently blow into my robes,And chillingly shrill into my ear;Emotions stirred, I think of my parents,Whilst I draw a long sigh of endless sorrows.Whenever guests visit from afar,I would often make joy of their tidings;I lost no time in throwing eager questions,Only to find that the guests were not from my home town.
Kingston tells the story of Ts’ai Yen to represent the possibilities of two cultures coming together and “translating well.” Kingston as a writer identifies with the poetess Ts’ai Yen over the strength they find in expression.
The women warriors can symbolically bridge the cultural gap between the barbarian (American/ghost) culture and their own with the power found in their unique voices.
Brief analysis:Brief analysis:
Character ( 人物 )
Setting ( 背景）
Plot （情节）
Point of view （视角）
Symbolism （象征）
Theme （主题）
Style （风格）
a complex portrayal of the 20th Century experiences of Chinese-Americans living in the U.S.
Folktale: Ts’ai Yen A.D. 175-
SettingSetting (背景）
social, economic, and legal discrimination
First generation Chinese-American
Gender discrimination
Context:Context:
Brave Orchid: the motherKingston: the daughter, authorA silent girl: A classmate whom Kingston torments when she is young Ts’ai Yen
Character Character 人物人物
the daughter vs. the mother
Protagonist vs. Antagonist
Protagonist vs. Companion
Character Character 人物人物
A silent girl vs. the author negative self vs. author
Ts'ai Yen vs. the author positive self vs. author
Character Character 人物人物
Plot:Plot: 情节
Chronological order
from Kingston’s youth to adulthood
a quiet, insecure, and alienated young girl; a rebellious teenager who blames her mother for her problems; a young adult, separated from her past and finally beginning to “see the world logically”; a more mature person, embracing her past and using it to find strength as a writer.
The most pivotal moments and phases of her life:
Conflict:Conflict:
Man vs. Man: mother vs. daughter
Man vs. community: Chinese vs. American
Man vs. Self: the author’s inner struggle
p.344
“Why did you do that to me, Mother?”“I told you.”“Tell me again.”“I cut it so that you would not be tongue-tied. Your tongue would be able to move in any language. You’ll be able to speak languages that are completely different from one another. You’ll be able to pronounce anything. Your frenum looked too tight to do those things, so I cut it.”“But isn’t ‘a ready tongue an evil’?”“Things are different in this ghost country.”……
speaking versus silence;
individual versus community;
Chinese-American versus emigrants
Besides,Besides,
Point of viewPoint of view （视角）
The first person point of view
Kingston’s autobiography
ThemeTheme （主题）（主题）
Speech vs. Silence
Gender Roles & Issues
Finding A “Voice”
Q: Why did I not speak louder or just keep silent outside the family?
During the first silent years I spoke to no one at school, did not ask before going to the lavatory, and flunked kindergarten. My sister also said nothing for three years, silent in the playground and silent at lunch…
--p. 345
…The other Chinese girls did not talk either, so I knew the silence had to do with being a Chinese girl…
--P. 346
Finding A “Voice”Finding A “Voice”
The final talk-story in The Woman Warrior is a fitting metaphor for Kingston’s own project. Just as Ts'ai Yen had to translate the songs of Barbarians back to her people, so must Kingston take incomprehensible “culture” and translate it to her readers.
StyleStyle （风格）
Definition:
Style: manner of expression; how a speaker or writer says what he says.
Types:Types:
Literary style can be classified by formality, directness, complexity of language and the tendency to use imagery. For example, a realistic style usually has stark imagery and relatively straightforward sentences, while a romantic style has flowery images and flowing sentences.
Effects
Literary style shapes the reader’s perception of the characters, the settings, the plot lines and the author herself.
Benefits
An author’s work is more recognizable if he has a distinctive style. He builds a reputation for a certain voice. Usually the style he chooses is influenced by the kind of writing he does. And often it also is influenced by the kind of image of himself he wants to project.
Kingston’s Style
For scholars of autobiography, Kingston’s story represents an important break from past writings;
Kingston’s Style
her complex, multi-layered and quasi- fictional narrative flies in the face of traditional autobiographies, which tend to follow a linear-chronological pattern and maintain a stable narrator—an “I”—throughout.
Kingston’s memoir, on the other hand, is a blending of voices and styles, often contradictory, that use many of the techniques of postmodernism: ambiguity, incoherence, pluralism, and irony.
考试题型：考试题型：
• I. Blank-filling (10×2’= 20’ 每空 2 分，共 20分 )
• e.g. • 1. The _____ is the sequence of events or what happens in a
story. The ____ refers to a clash between opposing forces, usually forcing the main character into a dilemma.
• 2. In Heart of Darkness, Kurtz dies finally with a whisper cry, “_____! ______”, which is considered as his final reflection upon his whole life.
II. Multiple Choice (10×1’= 10’ 每小题 1 分，共 10
分 )
1. Lord of the Flies was _____’s first success in novel writing.
• A. Joseph Conrad B. William Golding
• C. Katherine Mansfield D. Samuel Beckett
III. Passage Identification (12×2’= 24’ 每空 2 分，共 24 分 )
• 1. “ ‘How extraordinary!’ Rosemary peered through the dusk, and the girl gazed back at her. How more than extraordinary! And suddenly it seemed to Rosemary such an adventure. It was like something out of a novel by Dostoevsky, this meeting in the dusk…”
• A. The above passage is from ________ (the name of the work).
• B. It was written by ___________ (Author’s name).
• IV. Column-matching (6×1’ =6’ 每空 1 分，共 6 分 )
• In this section there are 6 main characters and 7 works. Please choose the corresponding work to match the main character at the left column respectively and then just write your choice before each character on the ANSWER SHEET.
V. Terminology Explanation (4×5’= 20’ 每小题 5 分，共 20分 )
• E.g.
• stream of consciousness
VI. Questions (3×10’=30’ 每小题 10分，共 30分 )
Choose TWO from the three questions below and write a short essay of more than 150 words for each. Answers to the first TWO questions will be marked should you work on all the three questions. Write your essays on the ANSWER SHEET.
考试注意事项考试注意事项：：
• 1. 作品名字的书写： 最好加上引号或下划线；• 2. 作者名字要写全名：如： William Wordsworth
• 3. 问答题要保证回答全面， 150 words
