Write an 800+ word draft of MP2 using at least five sources. As discussed during class on Wednesday, the idea here is that you’ll be engaging with sources meaningfully for your own purposes as you analyze the two texts you are working with for this essay.
The two texts that I have chosen to analyze are Wide Sargasso Sea and Boxers And Saints. I have chosen these texts because I can relate and differ them in many ways. I mainly want to focus on culture in both of these texts. There is a lot of culture and personal destiny in these books. So an overview, Wide Sargasso Sea is about explores relationships between men and women and talks about racism, slavery, and discrimination. There are parts in the book when the husband and wife trade places and she is his “owner”, while he is a slave. They had to base this off of looks and what would be most believeable, which ties into discrimination and racism. Boxers and Saints is a two-set novel. It has two different perspectives during the same events. Both Boxer and Saint have very different things happening in their lives during the Boxer Rebellion and Boxer was with the rebellion, while Saint was not. Saint was struggling with her religion and her family did not support her decision in wanting to join a Christian group. Saint and Antionette (from Wide Sargasso Sea), both struggle with religion. “faith and identity: What does it mean to be Chinese? To be Christian? Can you be both?” (https://www.npr.org/2013/10/22/234824741/boxers-saints-compassion-quesions-for-gene-luen-yang) This quote that I have chosen really connects with both novels. Boxer and Saint, as well as Antionette all struggle with their identity. Whether this is family, identity, religion, or culture, they all connect in some aspect. “None of you understand about us”(http://thebestnotes.com/booknotes/wide_sargasso_sea_rhys/Wide_Sargasso_Sea_Study_Guide15.html), this quote comes from Wide Sargasso Sea and it is Antionette basically saying that no one (Mr.Mason) understands them and what her and her family had came from. I believe that the way we were raised is a HUGE factor of culture and what we believe when we grow up. Mr. Mason in this novel was a lot more entitled because he had money. In a lot of cases, this should not matter. But in this time period, the more money you had meant that you were very high up on the social class.
Another connection I made in these novels is that the relationship that Antionette has with her mother is not very strong. Saint and her family do not seem to be close either, for obvious reasons. In my opinion, your family should support you no matter what, but that is not always the case. “Four-Girl is also a young Chinese peasant who escapes the oppressive sexism in her culture by converting to Christianity.” (https://catholicreads.com/2018/02/04/boxers-and-saints-by-gene-luen-yang/) For this quote, in the novel Saint, she is being bashed basically for her choices to be Christian, which even though religion is a big deal now, it is nowhere near as bad. Religion is a freedom right and we should be able to practice it, but Saint was not given this right. “Every war has two faces” (http://smithsonianapa.org/bookdragon/boxers-saints-by-gene-luen-yang-color-by-lark-pien/) Thinking about this quote, it connects really well with these books because that is the whole point of them being separate novels. What I understand from this quote is that there are two sides to everything, so that means different views.
One of the main differences in this book that I noticed in Wide Sargasso Sea, there were parts throughout the book that seemed somewhat normal. Antionette played with her friend and that was one of the most normal things throughout the book. In Boxers and Saints, I sensed no amount of “normal”. During this time, this was their “normal”, which is so sad to think about. The things going on during this time period were definitely not normal. “When I looked into the lives of the Chinese saints, I discovered that many of them had died during the Boxer Rebellion, a war that occurred on Chinese soil in the year 1900.” DUring this period, children and many others were dying, but it was such an average thing.(https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/gene-luen-yang-quotes)
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