The Analysis of Tragic Characters’ Tragedy Origin in The Woman Warrior Based on Freudian Psychoanalysis

Abstract

Maxine Hong Kingston is one of famous Chinese-American writers. Her prominent representative, The Woman Warrior, let her earn the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction in 1976. This great work surprised literary circle and attracted quiet a few researchers and scholars to appreciate and evaluate. This work is divided into five parts: “No Name Woman”, “White Tigers”, “Shaman”, “At the Western Palace”, “A Song for a Barbarian Reed Ripe”, which mainly tell about five females’ stories. With regard to this work, many studies have been conducted before. Here, this paper is designed to conduct the analysis of tragic characters’ tragedy origin in The Woman Warrior based on Freudian psychoanalysis. This paper finds that there are three psychological factors to contribute to the two tragic characters’ tragedy: the influence of the two tragic characters’ and people’s unconsciousness, the effect of tragic characters’ death instinct, and the tragic characters’ overuse of mental defense mechanisms which include displacement, depression, denial, and introjection.