Analysis Of Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior

Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior is an autobiography based on her childhood memories; even so, she uses techniques of characterization as if it is a fictional piece. She introduces memorable characters with unique personalities. These characters are the many people who have an impact on her childhood. After being introduced, Kingston fleshes them out through their dialogue and manner of speaking, and develops them through their interactions with others and changes to their surroundings. Through the stream of consciousness technique she employs, character insight on events and their motivations are steadily revealed. The end result is a cast of multilayered characters who change based on the circumstances surrounding them. Throughout the novel, Kingston utilizes a character’s dialogue and manner of speaking to flesh them out. It allows her to show off a character’s “personality in what [they] say” (Macauley and Lanning 105). Her mother, Brave …show more content…
In contrast, the stream of consciousness technique allows her to directly indicate how the characters feel in response to certain situations and “explore the minds of characters in a new way” (Macauley and Lanning 121). Kingston herself is mainly developed through this method. Her thoughts are clearly projected throughout the scene in which she bullies the young quiet girl in her Chinese class. Initially, she just commands the girl to talk because she “hate[s] fragility;” but as the bullying continued, she becomes afraid that she “couldn’t stop” and “start[s] to cry” (Kingston 176, 180). Initially determined to get the girl to talk, Kingston relentlessly harassed the girl to talk but starts to become reluctant when the bullying is not working. Developments such as this are able to be clearly articulated through the stream of consciousness technique because “character is a process, not a state” (Macauley and Lanning