It is not monkey’s awareness of the problem of life or his braveness which helps him to destroy the difficulties that confront him, and all those triumphs he has won that makes him a heroic model. But his refusal to call, or in other words, his confusion and his mistakes that truly help to build up a complete character, to draw us a more realistic image of hero(although he seems to be super unreal). Wu Chengen doesn’t try to set up an image of perfectness thorough out the novel, and moreover, he seems to deliberately assign imperfectness to those character who, in most readers’ mind, should born to be perfect, such as Wu-kong and all those gods in the heaven. As for monkey, the idea of going back to Mountain of Flower and Fruit has come to his mind many times in the whole novel. For example, after Tripitaka criticizing him for killing the robbers, he jumped onto his clouds and went a hundred and eight thousand leagues away(p.23). The story of Zhangliang enlightened monkey this time and helped him to pass through for this time. However, in the future, the contradiction between him and Trpitaka, Guan-yin and everyone else still exists, and there will be many refusal to call waiting for him to overcome.
Zeyu Kang.
Tripitaka throughout the story is constantly being put up against new trials. In fact, this whole journey with Monkey, Pigsy, etc. has been a trial for all of them. One of the trials that Tripitaka is currently going through is action. Tripitaka throughout the story has been failing to perform actions, what I mean by this is he gives up easily or doesn’t think of alternatives to get things done. While on the other hand Monkey is the complete opposite, he acts too much, sometimes he doesn’t think, he just does what he is feeling at the moment. An example would be near the beginning of the journey where Tripitaka and Monkey just teamed up and they face their first obstacle a tiger. In the text, it says “Tripitaka was terrified, but Monkey seemed delighted” this is a perfect example of the complete opposite that Tripitaka and Monkey are, like Ying and Yang. Another trial for Tripitaka is to lead his disciples on the right path, currently, Monkey is too outgoing, Pigsy has too much perversion causes trouble, etc. Even with all this said you can see that can see that part of Tripitaka is rubbing off on Monkey and part of Monkey is rubbing off on Tripitaka. Together they help each other grow. An example of this can be found when Pigsy’s village leader Mr. Kao, first saw Monkey, he said that he didn’t look like someone the village could rely on, this is how Monkey responded “You’ve evidently learnt very little wisdom. If you judge people by their appearances, you’ll always be wrong.” This is especially important because it goes to show that he has matured a little, not getting mad at Mr. Kao and he learned this line from Tripitaka. Another example of Tripitaka personality rubbing on Monkey is during the King’s death. Tripitaka asked Monkey to go retrieve the life-restoring elixir and he goes and gets it, but instead of stealing it like he did last time this time he asked Lao Tzu if he could have some. This goes to show that Monkey has grown in some way.
Denny Huang.