The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories

At the beginning of “The Paper Menagerie,” Jack is a young boy playing with his mother’s origami animals. As he interacts with more Americans, he begins to distance himself from his Chinese heritage and his mother. After his mother’s death, the origami animals remind him of her, and he finds her letter in the origami tiger. In this way, he reconnects with Chinese culture. Though the first part of the story paints him as callous and unfeeling toward his mother, he redeems himself at the end of the story when he sends his mother a message via the magical note in the tiger. The message reads “love,” and intertwines with his mother’s words, suggesting that he accepts her as a part of himself.

The protagonist of “Mono No Aware” is living through apocalyptic times. His parents stay behind on the doomed Earth, providing Hiroto with the last spot on an American spaceship. When the ship’s sail is torn, Hiroto sacrifices himself to fix the tear. Hiroto takes steps to further Japanese culture on the American ship, teaching his girlfriend Japanese and his friend a traditional game. His parents’ sacrifice has given him a sense of duty to preserve his culture for future generations and, having done so, he becomes a hero. Hiroto, as a character, is courageous and dutiful. 

Tian Haoli is a trickster hero, a Litigation Master. Like the Litigation Masters of Chinese folk tales, he is clever and cunning—the bane of a magistrate’s life, championing widows and orphans and using witty words and questionable legal tactics to get the best of his villainous opponents. In “The Litigation Master and The Monkey King,” Tian is even more so, thanks to the almost-literal monkey on his back, another trickster hero from Chinese literature.

Tian Haoli becomes a real hero and sacrifices himself for the good of others and to keep a banned book that exposes corruption safe He uses his cleverness to hide the truth in a song that will, hopefully, be passed down for ages, so that his death is not in vain. “I wish I was truly brave” (387), he says at the end, but his actions prove that he is. The Monkey King, who bows to him in tribute, agrees.