Literary Analysis Week 11, "The Journey to the West"

For week eleven I'm doing a literary analysis on the story, "The Journey to the West" By:Wu Cheng'en. After reading this story I found that it was interesting how the main character who was a stone monkey , saw humans in his eyes and how his judgment of humans can be compared to himself. The Monkey's mission to find the Buddhas who hold immortality led him to coming across humans and what he had to say caught my attention when he says, "He saw, however, that the people of the world were all seekers after profit and fame: there was not one who showed concern for his appointed end" (430). It's interesting to me that the author chose this approach to choose a stone monkey as the main character but the quote explains that the monkey sees people as wanting wealth and fortune rather than seek or pay concern to what he wants, which is immortality for his fellow monkey friends. After I continued to read on I noticed that the Stone Monkey is as similar to the humans as shown in the conversation with the woodcutter, " What a bonehead fellow you are!...I had just finished telling you these things, and you still don't understand. If I go with you, won't I be neglecting my livelihood? And who will take care of my mother? I must chop firewood. You go on by yourself!...When the Monkey King heard this, he had to take his leave" (433). The quote shows the Woodcutter irritated because the Stone Monkey ignored the Woodcutters story about his mother in which the Stone Monkey just wanted the Woodcutter to accompany him to the Buddhas for immortality. The Woodcutter had already told the Stone Monkey before why he had to care for his mother because he was all she had left. As the first quote showed the Stone Monkey saw that the humans were only interested in furthering their wealth and he did not like that because nobody was taking interest in what he wanted. With this second quote though I think it draws a comparison between the Stone Monkey and the humans because he too was not interested in the Woodcutters story unless it pointed him to the direction for immortality. Which was what irritated the Stone monkey previously that humans did not share his interests. In all this was interested me the most about the story because he was no different then the humans and it just shows the humans need for wealth is no different than the Stone Monkey need for immortality.

Cheng'en, Wu. "The Journey to the West." The Norton Anthology World Literature Volume D. Ed. Puchner, Martin, Suzanne Akbari, Wiebke Denecke, Vinay Dharwadker, Barbara Fuchs, Caroline Levine, Pericles Lewis, Emily Wilson. W. W. Norton & Company, pp. 421-436