TRANSLATING TRICKSTER, PERFORMING IDENTITY: REPRESENTATIONS OF THE KING ( WUKONG) IN CHINESE AND ASIAN AMERICAN REWRITINGS

A Dissertation Presented

by

HONGMEI SUN

Submitted to the Graduate School of The University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

May 2013

Program in Comparative Literature Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures

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once bravest demon or the demon that has created the biggest trouble in Heaven, that is about to kill or subjugate the demon in front of him. In chapter seventeen, for instance, when he fights a demon for the first time in his pilgrimage, he gives a 32-couplet-long self-introduction, a quite detailed outline of his life, including a vivid description of his battle against the Divine troops, no doubt demonstrating his pride in that history. The grandiloquent self-introduction ends with a stately exclamation: “Go and ask in the four corners of the universe: You’ll learn I’m the famous ranking demon of all times!”77 On other occasions throughout the journey when encountering demons, Monkey would boast about himself in similar ways, basically bragging about once being a splendid demon monkey.

The as a Trickster

The Monkey King is recognized as a Chinese trickster, if it is at all practicable to tag the Chinese figure with a western concept. According to Lévi-Strauss’s analysis of tricksters in North America, “The trickster is a mediator. Since his mediating function occupies a position halfway between two polar terms, he must retain something of that duality—namely an ambiguous and equivocal character.”78 Lévi-Strauss’s structural study of myth argues that myths can be broken down into repetitive patterns of contradictions, and that the purpose of myth is to “provide a logical model capable of overcoming a contradiction.”79 In the case of the trickster of North American mythology, the initial opposition is that between life and death. Almost always a raven or a coyote,

77 5SfbÉIJ IJ›²Q(ļ[ï q! Yu, 1:352,Wu, 1:217.

78 Levi-Strauss, Claude, “The Structural Study of Myth,” Structural Anthropology (Garden City, N. Y.: Anchor, 1967), 226.

79 Ibid, 229. 90 the trickster mediates the opposition between herbivores and beasts of prey, and ultimately mediates between life and death. The mythical world of Monkey King also demonstrates strong interest in variant contradictions, and Sun Wukong has always played an important role between contradictions, but his role surpasses that of a mediator.

In the cosmic order of ’s world, life and death do not really serve as the basic opposition. They do not appear simply as two ends of a polar system. The Monkey

King, as well as many other celestial beings or earth-dwelling demons, crosses the border between life and death quite with ease, or to put it more extremely, has successfully deleted the opposition between life and death. The universe of Xiyou ji is full of oppositions, but these oppositions between social or cosmic categories are presented as in constant negotiation, and the Monkey King not only mediates between these categories, he challenges the arbitrary lines between them. I argue that Sun Wukong is indeed a trickster, but beyond mediating between polar oppositions, he denies and deletes dualism and brings multiple and otherwise incompatible possibilities together.

William Hynes in “Mapping the Characteristics of Mythic Tricksters: A Heuristic

Guide” draws a border around the trickster figure whose nature tends to break borders.

Recognizing that tricksters are culturally specific, Hynes nevertheless assembles some shared characteristics of tricksters from African, Native American and other traditions.

For Hynes these shared characteristics can serve as an initial guide or typology. Or as suggested by some scholars, including Laura Makarius, such shared characteristics can be used as a matrix by which to survey trickster examples and to judge their degree of

“tricksterness.” Hynes’ list is composed of six features of the trickster: 1) the fundamentally ambiguous and anomalous personality of the trickster; 2) deceiver and

91 trick-player; 3) shape-shifter; 4) situation-inverter; 5) messenger and imitator of the gods;

6) sacred and lewd bricoleur.80 The characteristics of Monkey fit immediately and exactly into this matrix. The preceding discussion of the ambivalence in Sun Wukong’s character aligns with the first feature, though instead of “ambiguous” I use “ambivalent” or “multivalent,” to indicate capability.

As the primary feature, the first characteristic is the most fundamental and all the others follow naturally after it. Hynes in his brief study encompasses Claude Lévi-

Strauss’s view of the trickster as the epitome of binary oppositions, and echoes Robert

Perton’s observation that the trickster “pulverizes the univocal” and symbolizes the multivalence of life.81 The feature of ambivalence functions as the “and” between oppositions, which can be found in the other features of the trickster, all in certain ways manifestations of the first. For the unavoidable question of where the “and” function comes from, Laura Makarius explains that the ambivalence originates from the practice of magical violation of taboos in tribal societies by magicians, owing to the belief that in certain situations these violations can bring protection to the violator. The trickster, like the magician, takes upon himself the culpability of the group for breaking taboos for the sake of mankind. To summarize, Makarius posits that:

The ambivalence and contradictions that impregnate the accounts of the trickster do not …derive from an incapacity to differentiate the true from the false, the good from the evil, the benignant from the malevolent—but from a situation generative of ambivalence and contradictions that has shaped itself in the society, and of which the myth of the trickster is the expression.82

80 Hynes, “Mapping the Characteristics of Mythic Tricksters: A Heuristic Guide,” in Mythical Trickster Figures: Contours, Contexts, and Criticisms. (Hynes, William J. & William G. Doty, ed. Tuscaloosa & London: University of Alabama Press, 1993), 34.

81 Ibid, 35.

82 Hynes & Doty, Mythical Trickster Figures, 86. 92

In the case of xiyou ji, it seems that a parallel argument could be made about the Monkey

King, as well as the narrative of the novel and the society reflected. In addition to the previous discussion, the self-contradictory ambivalence of monkey character is best iconized by the pair of symbols that becomes crucial in representing Sun Wukong: the

Tightening Fillet and the Golden-Hooped Rod. The fillet and the rod are themselves a pair of dialectical contradictions. The rod, good at breaking things, and whose size can grow and shrink as wished, signifies the limit-testing and boundary-breaking side of

Monkey, while the fillet, which causes Monkey unbearable headache whenever Tripitaka recites the Tight-Fillet Spell, represents the limits that the monkey has to accept, however unwilling he may be. The rod indicates expansion and outward-going, while the encircling fillet represents containment. Paradoxically, the boundary-breaking rod and the order-enforcing fillet do not just work against each other. When they find their position on Monkey’s body, they become indispensable and complimentary to each other.

Significantly, the fillet stays around Monkey’s head, a firm control over the “Mind

Monkey” ( yuan) while the rod stays within Monkey’s ear when not in use, securely hidden in his head and within the sphere of the fillet’s control.

One incident that brings the complex relationship between the cudgel and the band into full play is the monkey’s conflicts with the black bull of Laojun (Most High

Lao Tzu, Taishang Laojun ǝƫħė).83 Before the encounter with the bull which escaped Laojun’s control and became an earthly demon, the monkey had drawn a circle on the ground to protect Tripitaka, and asked him to stay within the circle while Monkey left in search of food. Had Tripitaka and the other two disciples of his followed

83 Xiyou ji chapters 50-53. 93 Wukong’s advice, they would not have run into the cave of the bull demon. Significantly, this protective circle was drawn with the Rod, the weapon that the monkey uses to break circles—the caves and lairs of demons, and the gourds, bags, vases and other enveloping devices that demons use to engulf the pilgrims. In this instance the head fillet circle controls the rod; the rod creates a protective circle for the pilgrims; the pilgrims walk out of the circle, and hence they fall into the snare of the demon’s circle. It would then be up to Monkey to use his rod to break up the demon’s circle. However, in breaking his way into the cave circle of the bull demon, Monkey finds himself powerless before the bull’s

Gold Steel Ring (another circle), which seizes the rod of the monkey away. After many battles, with celestial help sought from different sources, the monkey eventually finds aid from Laojun, who takes the bull back within his subjugation. Consequently, Tripitaka is rescued and returned back to the protective circle of Wukong’s rod, Wukong returned within the control of the head fillet, and the band of pilgrims march on, ready to walk into or be engulfed within the circle of another demon along their way. In one incident after another, the story is thus propelled by the intertwining pair of rod and circle.

One detail of this incident also points out the indispensability of the one with respect to the other. It will be recalled that it was a Gold Steel Ring (Jin gang zhuo) that helped to bring the monkey under heavenly control five hundred years earlier, and in fact it was the very same ring. At that time Laojun used the ring in a very different way: while overviewing the battle between Monkey and the Little Sage Erlang Shen, he threw the ring from above and hit Monkey in the head. This strange use of the containing device was improvised by Laojun in response to ’s idea of using her vase to hit Monkey over his head. Instead of using the encompassing power of their containing devices, they

94 both only thought of using the expelling function, which was not the strongest power of their “weapons” at all. Would it not have been much easier if they simply used the ring or vase to snatch the rod from the monkey, or better, to engulf Sun Wukong himself into their circles? There are always feasible answers to this question, such that the real conquest of the monkey is not to take away his weapon, but to change him from a rebel to an advocate. That is, to change the “mind” of the mind-monkey. After all, as stated in the

“Original Preface” by Yu Ji (Ćķ) attached to the Qing hundred-chapter version Xiyou zhengdao shu (ȅɓɼidž), the central message of the book is about two conditions of the mind: the mind under control and the mind let go (shou fang xin ¦§‹). Since both the rod and the head fillet play crucial roles in evolving the lessons of recovering the mind and exiling the mind, we can also say the story of is a story of the cudgel and the fillet.

As a narrative rejecting dichotomy, Xiyou ji clearly rejects a simple division of the story into shouxin (controlling the mind, recovering of mind) and fangxin (letting the mind go, exile of the mind) parts. Not only is the mind-monkey always fond of his mischievous ways when he remains a follower of Tripitaka; in the two episodes of the

“exile” of the mind-monkey84 he is never totally let loose either. In both cases he had asked Tripitaka or to take his head fillet off, but neither of them were able to fulfill his request. Ironically, although Tripitaka “exiles” the monkey from the pilgrim group, his power over the Tightening Fillet remains. Monkey, on the other hand, is also never totally happy when being “exiled.” In the case of the first “exile,” to persuade the monkey to return, Bajie had to resort to a stratagem: he lied to the monkey that the

84 Xiyou ji chapters 27-31, 56-58. 95 monster who has beaten the pilgrims did not take seriously of the name of Sun Wukong and his deeds in heaven five hundred years ago. Ironically, it was in defense of his

“number one monster” name that the monkey left his Flower-Fruit Mountain and returned to rejoin the band of pilgrims.

In the case of the second “exile,” the episode of the “double-mind monkey”

(Erxin yuan ‹Ù), a fake Wukong commits a series of monstrous things in his name.

While one mind-monkey is staying with the Bodhisattva, the other mind-monkey goes to strike the master Tripitaka unconscious, takes his travel documents, returns to the Flower-

Fruit Mountain, and set up another pilgrim band, ready for his own journey to the West.

The resemblance of the two mind-monkeys deceives everyone except the Buddha, who sees through the fake Wukong and recognizes him as a six-eared macaque (liuer mihou

Ľ‰ʤÏ). The use of a double of Wukong enables the narrative to literally grant the monkey the facility to be self-contradictory, with one Monkey being a pious follower of

Tripitaka, and the other a monster who is even capable of beating his master. However, why Sun Wukong would kill the six-eared macaque in front of the Buddha is left to interpretation. One feasible explanation would be that it is an action of eliminating the monster part of him, indicating that he is getting closer to achieving at this point of the journey. However, this explanation does not negate another one: that he kills the six-eared macaque because the latter has copied him too vividly, the best demon among the ones that Monkey had conquered. By killing his rival who resembles himself, he plays the norm of self-contradiction to an extreme. It is worth focusing on this point further by analyzing the methods the monkey and other gods use to conquer monsters.

96 One trick that the monkey loves to play is to get to the inside of a monster. By this is not only meant the metaphorical meaning of Wukong getting into the caves and tunnels of the hostile offending animals; he literally entered the stomachs of them many times in the book.85 Plaks contends that one reason these monsters must be subdued from inside is that “the secret of subduing the hostile creature lies in tricking him into identifying himself, as if, by defining its own being, the force is reduced to the vulnerable proportions of a finite self.”86 In this sense, Monkey’s mischief-making in the monster’s stomach functions just like the tightening fillet over his head. By pinning down his true form, all the false forms are taken away, so that the ambiguity of identity achieved by taking up false forms is no longer possible.

In the Black Wind Mountain episode, the trick of getting inside is directly connected to the use of a tightening head fillet. Here Wukong and Guanyin cooperate to subdue a demon, the Black Bear. Wukong proposes that Guanyin transform herself into a demon friend of Black Bear so that she might present a cinnabar pill (Wukong in disguise) to the bear. Black Bear ingests the pill, i.e. Monkey, into his stomach.

Immediately losing all his power with Wukong kicking and jumping within, the bear monster gives in, while Guanyin, to secure this victory, puts a head fillet over Monkey’s head. So when Wukong emerges from Black Bear’s mouth the headband remains, as an index of his finite self, preventing him from slipping away by taking up a guise of ambiguity.

85 For instance, in chapter 17 he transforms into a cinnabar pill and gets into the Black Bear. In chapter 59, he turns himself into a tiny mole-cricket and hides in the tea bubble, and is so drunk by Raksasi (Iron Fan Princess). In chapter 82, after his first effort of being drunk along the tea failed, he turns into a red peach and is eaten by the white mouse demon.

86 Plaks, Four Masterworks, 257-8. 97 Turning to the case of the submission of mind-monkey, although the method used by the Buddha is different the logic surrounding the constraining function is the same.

The wager between Buddha and the monkey on whether Monkey can jump out of

Buddha’s hand is actually on the limit of Monkey’s self. At the very moment the actual smallness of the monkey’s bloated self is demonstrated in the shadow of the Buddha’s fingers, the overblown mind-monkey is reduced to finite proportions, and his rehabilitative imprisonment under Five Elements Mountain begins. The lesson demonstrates to him that however far the “cloud-somersault” can reach it would also be his boundary, a boundary that he could not break. The Buddha’s fingers serve as an index, revealing to the monkey that what beats him is his own self. Later this indexing role of Buddha’s hand is taken over by the Five Elements Mountain, and after that the headband. Whenever Tripitaka recites the spell, Monkey is reminded of his own limit, and the impossibility of breaking it, even with his rod.

Returning here to the case of the Six-Eared Macaque, one can reach an opposite and perhaps clearer explanation as to why Wukong chooses to kill him: for his freedom.

Just as in the submission of Wukong, Buddha beats the Six-Eared Macaque at his forte.

Although the fake Wukong is strong in taking forms of others and had succeeded in confusing everyone else, the Buddha is able to tell that what they were facing was someone belonging to none of the ten categories in the universe, neither the five immortals (wu "') nor the five creatures (wu chong "ć). But there were four kinds of monkeys who “are not classified in the ten species, nor are they contained in the names between Heaven and Earth,” among which was the first, “the intelligent stone monkey (Lingming shihou ѯéØ), who knows transformations, recognizes the

98 seasons, discerns the advantages of earth, and is able to alter the course of planets and stars” and the fourth, “the six-eared macaque, who has a sensitive ear, discernment of fundamental principles, knowledge of past and future, and comprehension of all things.”87

This recognition not only announces the six-eared macaque’s failure, (one had been trying to use his disguise to erase the boundary of his self while taking up the identity of

Wukong), it also announces once again the failure of Wukong, who although not belonging to any of the ten species between heaven and earth, still falls into one of the in- between types that the Buddha names: the intelligent stone monkey, indeed a peer of the six-eared macaque. Therefore by killing the six-eared macaque Wukong not only kills a monster who has tried to cross proper borders, he also kills a self whose boundary has just been pinned down. This action of self-annihilation is in this sense an effort in defiance of any classification.88

In this light, Wukong’s action of extricating demons along their way, often against the wish of Tripitaka, Guanyin and even the Buddha, cannot be simply taken as a demonstration of his commitment to the pilgrimage, nor is it just a metaphor for eradicating inner monsters on the way to self-enlightenment. It refuses to be easily categorized and put into a neat frame labeling its nature. In this sense, the character of

Monkey King fits Hynes’ standard for tricksters listed before, and challenges it at the same time. His example finds the matrix for tricksters too small.

The subjugation of the monkey by the Buddha has been mentioned as a turning point of Monkey’s life, and this incident can likewise be taken as a watershed of the

87 Chapter 58; Yu, 3:131; Wu, 2:751.

88 A contemporary rewriting of Monkey’s story, An Autobiography of Wukong (Wukong zhuan) by Jin Hezai, is aligned with this interpretation. In eliminating himself, Wukong supposedly achieved ultimate freedom. 99 book, with the story of the monster monkey before it, and that of the pilgrim monkey after. Another natural step following this logic allows one to say that the former part of the story is the story of the Cudgel, and the latter the story of the Tightening Fillet.

However, our analysis already points out the oversimplification of this logic: the whole story is not cut into two pieces, because the rod is active not only in the hand of the monster monkey, but also the pilgrim monkey. A clear dichotomy does not work with the narrative. There is no better cutting point than this one in the book, but story and the character simply reject a dichotomous analysis. Readers may often find it hard to tell whether the monkey is a monster or a pilgrim at any one incident: just like the cudgel and headband, the monster and pilgrim are indispensable two sides of the character of Sun

Wukong.

Xiyou ji: The Ambivalent Text

The narrative of Xiyou ji itself also has an ambivalent nature. Containing and allowing for contradictions is a central message of the book. Themes and rhetoric of

Buddhism, , and all appear in every part of the work. For a story of

Buddhist monks’ pilgrimage for Buddhist , it also bears apparent characteristics of

Taoist dual cultivation. While gods of Buddhist and Taoist traditions happily coexist, a

Confucian emphasis on filial piety and loyalty is also prevalent. Owing to the coexistence of heterogeneous factors, the text gives space for interpretations in various directions in examining the metaphorical meaning of the book. Many have addressed the allegorical meaning of Xiyou ji from Taoist, Buddhist, neo-Confucian, as well as political points of view.89

89 See Andrew Plaks and Anthony Yu’s comment on three religions. Plaks, 1977 and Yu, 1977. 100