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M Butterfly
Creating Honor in M. Butterfly
Gallimard's statement early on in Hwang's M. Butterfly that he is always seeking a new ending in which "she" comes back to him, and in which he can find honor, does not initially seem to be fulfilled by his actions in the final scene, at least not on the surface. Left alone and disgraced in his cell, having loved a man he thought to be a woman for twenty years and finding a much deeper betrayal, that his lover had been using him to spy on his country's actions, Gallimard kills himself. Suicide is not an end associated with honor in the Western tradition, and thus a surface examination of the final scene in the play seems to suggest that Gallimard has failed on all counts: he has not succeeded in bringing his lover back, he does not really bring about a "new" ending, and the end does not contain any honor from the dominant perspective of his society. M. Butterfly is a play about...
Seen in this light, and in the context of the opera Madame Butterfly that serves as a specific and explicit symbol and analogy of Gallimard's life, this protagonist manages to invoke the presence of his lover and achieve a certain level of honor in his death.
It is perhaps overly simplistic to say that suicide is seen as honorable in many societies, and especially in many Asian societies, but this basic fact is of immense importance in properly understanding the ending and the impact of M. Butterfly. It is not an effort to somehow escape from his problems that drives Gamillard to his fatal action, nor is it shame at the fact that he was fooled and used…
Butterfly David Henry Hwang's Pulitzer-prize-winning drama M. Butterfly is almost single-minded in its examination of the role played by preconceptions in the establishment of cultural expectations and stereotypes. Based on a true story, the drama to some extent lays out in clear precise terms the ways in which Western prejudices toward China can lead to results that would seem wildly implausible in a brief factual summary, but are nonetheless the foreordained
She knew the secret I was trying to hide. but, unlike a Western woman, she didn't confront me, threaten, even pout. (Hwang 519) Song also expresses how Gallimard has viewed her and her country when the says to the judge, The West thinks of itself as masculine -- big guns, big industry, big money -- so the East is feminine -- weak, delicate, poor... But good at art, and full of
Butterfly, David Hwang questions many assumptions about Asian women that are apparent in Madame Butterfly. In Madame Butterfly, the beautiful young Japanese geisha, Butterfly, sacrifices her family ties, religion, and eventually her life for an American, Lieutenant Pinkerton, who never intends to take her back to America. Hwang's M. Butterfly, in contrast, tells the story of an American man in China during the Vietnam era, Gallimard, who falls in love
In the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries most of the major European powers were part of this colonial grab for power and territory; and after the American Civil War, so was the United States. Almost immediately this translated into an East/West schism in which both sides harbored bias about each other, never really understanding the motivations of each other's actions. This is the world in which Pinkerton arrives --