#jttw analysis

[tuima11]

Journey to the West chapter 2

Listen I have no idea why my JttW coloring book chose to make Patriarch Subodhi of all people ✨beautiful✨ but at this point I just roll with these things. I gave him white hair at least, but I just feel like Wukong's by-turns-crotchety-and-indulgent first teacher DESERVES a long white beard to stroke. @arleniansdoodles did him justice at least.

Anyway! What a fun chapter! Wukong at his Wukong-iest: dancing around with excitement, sassing authority figures, outsmarting and annoying all the side characters, forgetting the passage of time, gleefully showing off, getting kicked out, doting on his little monkeys, and beating the crap out of some random arrogant bully.

10/10 Monkey King, no notes

Interesting facts this chapter gives us:

-there are "tens of thousands" of monkeys on Mt Huaguo. No wonder Wukong started building up an army!

-Subodhi's other disciples taught Wukong "how to speak and move with proper courtesy...the arts of language and etiquette." One must presume he learned these specifically so he could avoid doing them.

-Wukong's less than four feet tall, according to the Monstrous King of Havoc...but he's also less than thirty years old? We know that's not true: he was "three or four hundred years old" when he left to seek immortality. Probably this is a generic insult re: the Monkey King's inexperience/ lack of status (related to how he's always calling himself people's grandpa or Old Sun later in the book, as a status marker). But wouldn't it be funny if yaoguai just age differently and so by the Monstrous King's standards this monkey is but a callow youth.

-Wukong knows calligraphy and gardening and the Daoist scriptures and magical breathing exercises and secret "oral formulas" and can memorize complex spells in a go and please stop making him out to be a dumb violent idiot who happens to have superpowers, all you adaptations. He LEARNED his powers, because he is the Intelligent Stone Monkey. Thank you.

-Part of Subodhi's formula for immortality is "No Sex." Wukong raises zero objections. Feeding my aroace SWK interpretations, whoooo!

-The whole bit where Subodhi banishes Wukong is so out of pocket. It's genuinely hard to tell whether the patriarch is petty & annoyed, or fearful for Wukong's safety, or genuinely disapproves of Wukong's use of his powers, or has foreseen his tragic fate and wants to distance himself, or just thinks Wukong is a bad egg (and wants to distance himself). Possibly all of them at once? There's really something to be said for the way this book just clips along past these emotional moments: it's up to the reader to fill in gaps and that almost makes them hit harder.

-Delighted to learn that the yak-tail whisk is "inseparably associated with the Daoist or Buddhist recluse and served as a symbol of his purity and detachment." I'd kind of gotten that vibe already just watching Chinese media but here it is spelled out for me and I appreciate that. :)

-This iconic quote:

Thanks again @journeythroughjourneytothewest for putting together this reading group!

*Probably Inaccurate Translation for the chibi page:

Subodhi: Wukong, the method of eternal life, the transformation of rice, and the muscle fighting cloud, which one do you want to learn?

Wukong: Only the little monkeys make the choice, and the adult monkeys all want it (want all of it?)

[journeytowardsthewest]

A Brief speculation on the JttW pilgrims' color-coded attires in the book

To my fascination, and slight distress, I have a theory I don't think I've seen discussed on this site and it involves the colors of the pilgrims' robes. I didn't want to compose an ambitious post about this finding since I've already had some longer posts in the works--this was initialy just a passing observation I made while trying to design the pilgrims slightly closer to their book descriptions. So I'll keep things "relatively short."

For clarity, I do all my analysis using the Anthony C. Yu translations of the book.

In China, there is the concept of "Wuxing"--a chinese philosophy used in a lot of traditional Chinese fields of study to explain many phenomena. Wuxing works with a five elements structure to embody metaphors, medicinal concepts; it often is applied conceptually as a shorthand for an assortment of symbollic imagery and ideas built into Chinese culture. Even cardinal directions coordinate with the five elements (North, South, East, West, Center).

The Four Dragon Kings of the Sea in Chinese myths can be artistically depicted to correspond to the colors related to their cardinal directions. By this logic, the Dragon King of the West is white, the Dragon King of the East is azure, the Dragon King of the North is black, and the Dragon King of the South is red. Though, this isn't all encompassing--many designs for the dragon kings will color them however they want, this is just an example of applying Wuxing for potential design purposes! Unless it's explicitly stated, I don't think there's a "canon" color for the dragon kings.

But, here's where the pilgrims come in.

The pilgrims are given specific elements in the chapter titles.

Specifically Wukong (Metal), Bajie (Wood), and Wujing (Earth)

And guess what colors these three pilgrims are explicitly said to wear at least once in the entire novel[1][2][3][4][5].

Wukong gets a white shirt (it gets replaced with a nondescript shirt that comes with the fillet), Bajie gets an azure shirt (later chapters say it's black but he hadn't explicitly changed his attire between that), and Wujing gets a yellow shirt.

white = metal, azure = wood, yellow = earth.

And if we apply this philosophy to Tripitaka and Bai Longma, we can actually conclude on what remaining elements belong to who since there's no explicit application made in text.

Do you know what Tripitaka's robe is?

It doesn't get mentioned often, but from chapter 23, we have this excerpt from an old woman[6] who tries to get the pilgrims to marry into her household.

The woman is directly addressing Tripitaka here, so I think this speaks mostly to him than it does to the rest of the pilgrims--who hadn't been said to change into these clothes when they became Tripitaka's disciples. Tripitaka is consistently said to wear a robe, sandals, and a coir hat[7].

To clarify on the second image, a Bodhidharma gown is a gown closely associated with the legendary founder of Chan Buddhism of the same namesake. One of the accounts describing him that I've found states him to put on the black robe of a monk:

So, Tripitaka's wearing a black monk robe, and black is the color associated with the element of water--so, in theory, Tripitaka's element is water, and should it surprise anyone? His nickname was "River Float", many of his life's greatest conflicts were associated with water and he brings this up while trapped within a stone box underwater[8]:

And chapters prior, when Wukong took off after being exiled, it was hearing the roar of water and seeing the Great Eastern Ocean that made him think of Tripitaka[9]. I find Wukong's apparent aversion to dealing with water ironic with this interpretation in mind.

Bai Longma and his association with fire is pretty minor aside from the most obvious correlation:

Honorable mentions are the excerpts about the "fire leaping/leaping up in his heart". They're honorable mentions because I think it's neat, but not specific to Longma since Wukong, Wujing, Bajie, Red Boy, Bull King, etc. get this phrase also used to describe a surge in passion/anger.

Wukong is first described with this phrase when he got pissed off realising his title as Bimawan/BanHorsePlague was the lowest of the low ranks [10], and Longma gets provoked by Wukong cursing him out [11]. Dragons/horses were involved in the first two uses of this phrase in the novel! Isn't that a fun trivia?

Last notable trivia to do with Longma's association with fire is that in JttW works prior to the novel we're familiar with, one of them features a prototype for the character that refers to him as the "Third Prince Fire Dragon". That last trivia piece can be credited to Journey to the West Research's article about the dragon horse here.

So to close this post off, the pilgrims appear to be deliberately color-coded in relation to the five elements in Wuxing and aside from Bai Longma--whose attire doesn't get a colored decription--I think at the very least, Tripitaka's element is water, and Longma's is fire.

NOTES

[1]: Chapter 14 [2]: Chapter 18 [3]: Chapter 19 [4]: Chapter 22 [5]: Chapter 22 [6]: Chapter 23 [7]: Chapter 36 [8]: Chapter 49 [9]: Chapter 27 [10]: Chapter 4 [11]: Chapter 15

[passions-and-pupils]

the true horror of Sun Wukong at the beginning of the journey was his complete lack of empathy. He could kill hundreds in the blink of an eye and not feel a thing for them. That’s why he needed the golden fillet, To make him feel what his victims felt.

And yet it didn’t work. Sun Wukong kept killing until he had to fight his biggest enemy, himself

The Six Eared Macaque represented his hostility, his lack of empathy, his malice. He was the part of Sun Wukong that wanted to get revenge on his master for banishing him from the journey, the part that thought he did nothing wrong and didn’t deserve punishment.

When he looked at the Six eared Macaque he realized that he didn’t want to be that person . so when he killed macaque he killed that part of himself and he went back on the journey, this time much more willing to change.

[glamygdala]

is sun wukong really a demon or is the term ''demon'' used as an allegorical term for his attitude and misdeeds?

Well anon, while I definitely can't claim any expertise on the Chinese concept of "demon," I will say from what I know that "demons" in Chinese culture do seem to be quite different from those from a Euroamerican background.

Mainly, "demon" in Euroamerican culture generally seems to refer to a strictly evil entity--traditionally originating as fallen angel--whose primary goal is to lead humans astray so that they'll sin and be doomed to an eternity in hell. They stand as the polar opposite of the angels and heaven, and while this kind of demon has been depicted in a wide variety of forms, their goals are unchanging.

A "demon" in Chinese mythology, on the other hand, is a "yaoguai," or an entity that's perhaps more akin to the English term "monster" in that while they certainly can be--and as demonstrated by Journey to the West often are-- malevolent to humans, as a group they seem far less interested in leading humans into a life of sin and far more interested in fulfilling their own desires, as well as in cultivating Taoist power so that they can attain a humanoid and immortal form. Yaoguai seem to have a wide variety of origins--to give a sample, the Lady White Bone originated from a human skeleton, Sun Wukong came from a giant stone, and Red Boy was the progeny of two married yaoguai--and they also seem to lead a wide variety of different kinds of lives (some are married with kids, some are warlords, some just keep to themselves, etc.). That said, there does seem to be a commonality between many of them in terms of living in mountain caves and having a distinct preference for human flesh. Even so, there seems to exist a much more fluid boundary between animals, yaoguai, humans, and even gods than Euroamerican thinking usually permits and that seems to be significantly based on how one chooses between the possibilities inherent in one's life. It is this fluidity that makes Sun Wukong such an interesting case; you could argue, after all, that he is both monkey, human, demon, god, and buddha all at the same time.

Here's a few samples from professor of Chinese literature Hongmei Sun's analysis of Sun Wukong in her pretty excellent work Transforming Monkey that go over the ambiguous character of the monkey king:

And finally, as Sun notes, Andrew Plaks argues that “the characteristic Chinese solution to the problem of duality ‘consists in the conception of a universe with neither beginning nor end, neither eschatological nor teleological purpose, within which all of the conceivable opposites of sensory and intellectual experience are contained, such that the poles of duality emerge as complementary within the intelligibility of the whole.’ This argument about the Chinese concept of complementary duality provides an interesting explanation for the coexistence of contradictions in the narrative. It may also count as one of the cultural situation ‘generative of ambivalence and contradiction’ that folklorist Laura Makarius discusses. The concept of complementary duality in Chinese culture certainly helps explain the fundamental ambiguity regarding the teachings in the journey, the most famous being the merging boundary between god and demon.”

-----

So in conclusion--and keeping in mind as always that I'm in no way an authority on this & that people who know more should feel free to add on to what I've said here or correct me if I'm wrong--I think you could certainly describe many aspects of Sun Wukong (including much of his behavior) as demonic, but that this only counts for a part of his multifaceted character. He may be a yaoguai, after all, but he is also the Buddha Victorious in Strife.

----

Also (and in hopes of not being too annoying lol) I’d like to tag the ever-interesting @journeytothewestresearch to this to see if they might have something to add about the nature of Sun Wukong specifically or yaoguai in general.

[tuima11]

I can't find the "Golden Fillet V.S. Canon Fight!" with about, 15 comments. (which is NOT FAIR because I saw it moments ago. there was an hour interval between the moments but still)

I believe in one of the comments it said that Tripitaka recited the Sutra about 60 times. Is that true? And if so, did he say it 60 times every recitation or is that the amount of times summed up over the course of the years?

Oh, and thank you for such a detailed essay on the matter! It really cleared up the misconceptions I had on Tripitaka's character beforehand and it was well done too!

Here it is!

And yes, the excellent @pompomqt counted every recitation of the sutra in the novel and came up with 63 total!

Tripitaka punished Sun Wukong with the fillet EIGHT times over the 14 year journey. Details of each use are here

Since the severity/ duration of the migraine was determined by how many times he recited the sutra without stopping, there were a couple of incidents in which he completely lost his temper and recited it 20+ times in a go. There were also a couple one-off recitations.

I think the point I tried to get across in the essay, and one of my motivations for writing it, was that Tripitaka is nowhere near as trigger-happy as people like to portray him. He was aware the fillet was a Big Deal Punishment and used it sparingly. But if he'd gotten worked up enough to use it he could be pretty merciless. He is the Heart, and is often overruled by his own emotion, with predictably ugly results.

Thank you very much for asking! And I'm so glad you appreciated my ridiculously long essay XD

[journeytowardsthewest]

Is Sha Wujing still wearing his nine skulls necklace during the journey?

Me: why is it taking so long to nail down the pilgrims' designs?

Also me just now: …is Sha Wujing still wearing his nine skull necklace…?

For anyone who's curious, no, Wujing isn't wearing his nine skull necklace in the pilgrimage, it peaced out after serving as a dharma vessel:

One of the most interesting JttW headcanons I think abt is the idea that these nine skulls could've been the Golden Cicadas' previous lives; because they were strangely scripture pilgrims whose skulls alone--out of many other victims'--floated to the top. The reason they float to the top is not given any real answer, but this headcanon comes with the speculation that, should the scripture monk have always been Tripitaka in some form, then his holiness made the skulls stand out from any other mortal.

I read into this headcanon with the mindset that Sha Wujing's character--an earnest, most willingly devout Buddho-Daoist practitioner and disciple--had previously, in his fall from dignity, defiled himself by partaking in cannibalistic yao means out of desperation. And, he was so reduced to animalistic impulse, that the skulls were mere playthings to him to curb his ultimately bleak and painful existence. So, he never gets the chance to have mental clarity to ponder the significance of the scripture monk's duty until he was enlisted to become the next scripture monk's disciple. And I think there's solid foundation to develop an internal story covering Wujing's regained rationality--only to have processed belatedly and unpleasantly that he might have been the very reason his master (who he obediently follows and respects) had lost his nine lives prior.

[journeytowardsthewest]

The "Has Sun Wukong eaten humans" discussion

I've seen this topic get discussed online quite a bit, and this is coming from someone who jumps back and forth between the chapters regularly. So take this as my point of view.

Here is the excerpt from volume 2, chapter 27, page 20:

To be apt, I think SWK is speaking in a completely misleading tone. There isn't really a time in his life where he seemed to willingly interact with any humans for the purpose of eating them.

"When I was a monster back at the Water-Curtain Cave, I would act like this if I wanted human flesh" is the kind of phrasing one would use to insinuate that one's thought process could align with that of a predator hunting for human meat-- but pointedly the inclusion of "would act like this" suggests that it's logical inference than empirical data.

I think the grotesque details in which he suggests he'd prepare human meat is to spook Tripitaka into believing that the white bone spirit was SO THREATENING that SWK's violent disposal of the beautiful girl was warranted. But in an ironic sense, it probably shot him in the foot, cuz in the back of Tripitaka's mind, on top of refusing to believe SWK's cajoling, he'd be stirred by the disturbing reminder that SWK is recklessly violent AND A DEMON.

Making it so that while SWK was ostensibly justified in his assessment of the threat, his manner of justification only served to make him sound less credible, and altogether dangerous.

[passions-and-pupils]

Sun Wukong’s Point of view

Thinking about how Sun Wukong declared himself “Great Sage Equal To Heaven”. Not above heaven, equal. He wasn’t claiming to be better than the gods, just equal. He was asking to be seen as a peer and from his point of view he probably couldn’t see why that was so offensive. He was certainly as strong as the gods, (he proved that later on when he beat Li Jing, and Li Nezha) he was well versed in Taoist philosophy, and he was made from the heavens so why was he seen as less than!

In his eyes all he had done was know his worth and not know the proper etiquette due to his upbringing (He was literally raised by animals).

Imagine his hope when he was excepted as an equal. He thought he had finally proved himself, that now he would be taken seriously.

But it was all a lie. A ruse made to truck him into complacency. They didn’t see him as an equal, and they never would! he could win a fistfight with the emperor and still be seen as of lower status. So he decided to make them regret thinking Sun Wukong could be pushed aside and forgotten. he caused as much mischief as he could while also racking up immortality. That way even if they tried to get rid of him they couldn’t. This later worked against him as Bhuddha himself found a way to get rid of him without death.

I imagine him thinking over his life in his head wondering where he went wrong and sure, he would redo a few things if he could but he still didn’t understand why he wasn’t worthy of being an equal before he went of his rampage. and it would take 500 years for someone to show him why and tell him how to be better.