Monkey - Journey to the West Review

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Monkey - Journey to the West ReviewThis is a challenging book to review in that it is long, as are the other classic Chinese epics (Three Kingdoms, Outlaws of the Marsh and Dream of the Red Chamber) and accordingly contains much that will on the one hand provoke, entertain and inspire the modern reader while also containing much many are likely to find infuriating.
The basic plot is simple and well-known (and easily researchable on Wikipedia and other web sites). An emperor of China's Tang dynasty, seeking enlightenment for his kingdom, appoints a monk to journey to the west (India) to worship the Buddha and bring back the scripture. The monk has four disciples (fallen beings who are being given a chance to redeem themselves) who help him. These are the Monkey King, the Pig, and Friar Sand, and the horse. Pig and Friar Sand were heavenly Generals who messed up and were put into the bodies of animals. The horse is a dragon who is working off a sin by being in the body of a horse. Monkey was born of stone and is redeeming himself after having caused considerable chaos in and even revolted against heaven, taking on everybody there including the Jade Emperor (a stand-in, it seems, for God).
This is based on a true story wherein a Tang emperor really did send a monk on a mission to bring back Buddhist scripture, and also gather information (a Lewis & Clark type exploratory mission). It's a long trip accomplished on foot and for the monk, horseback (the main modes of transportation back then). The disciples can travel via cloud, but not the monk. But in the epic, the length of the trip is the least of the challenges. Again and again and again the party is beset by demons many of whom want to eat the monk's flesh in order to gain eternal life (something that is said to be possible given the monk's purity). Unlike other famous fictional voyagers, though, this monk couldn't fight his way out from under a grain of rice. He spends pretty much the entire epic weeping and complaining. It's mainly Monkey, helped more or less (emphasis on "less") by the other disciples, that constantly has to overcome the obstacles.
The points of interest, the good parts, come from the nature of the adventures (quite varied and imaginative) and perhaps more important, the key relationships: between Monkey and the Monk, between Monkey and the assortment of deities, and between Monkey and the other disciples.
The monk is the prototypical whiney nerd. As mentioned, his specialties are weeping and complaining. Moreover, he is fooled by more illusions than a ten-year-old at a cheap magic show; actually, he's fooled by all illusions. Monkey, on the other hand, is the one who "gets it." His ability to see what's real isn't quite 100%, but its close and even when he errs, he corrects himself very quickly. He is, perhaps, the single greatest, most skilled, and most powerful (lots of magic powers) sidekick in all of literature (East or West).
So you'd think the Monk would revere and trust Monkey, right? Not so. The Monk does not trust Monkey at all and rejects his advice every time, until he gets into a mess and has no choice to do what Monkey demands in order to escape the crisis, only to distrust Monkey again next time. Twice in the epic, Monk gets so angry at what he perceives to be a bad attitude on the part of Monkey, he fires him (kicks him out of the expedition), but, of course, is force to be reconciled lest he wind up as dinner for a monster. But the Monk just doesn't learn. He continually trusts Pig, whose main concern is his own indulgence. As to capabilities, Pig is OK, but a distant second behind Monkey.
I'm not sure why the author fusses about the horse and Friar Sand. Neither has any discernable personality and both seem to be there just to carry stuff. And this is where we begin to get into things that may annoy a modern Western reader. The practice of the art of fiction here is not what we're used to.
The epic relies a lot, and I mean A HECK Of A LOT on a fictional technique known as "deus ex machina" which translates literally to "God out of the machine." It's well known in ancient Greek theater. The author sets up a fascinating plot conflict and then finds himself unable to logically solve it, so an actor playing one the Gods is lowered to the scene from a set of pulleys (the machine) to sort everything out. The Greeks get away with it because the conflict is usually more important than the details of how it's resolved, but even they don't completely escape criticism. In this epic, "deus ex machina" is used constantly. Like the Greeks, conflict and escape are paramount, but with the Greeks, you get one "deus ex machina" instance per play. Here, it bombards you again and again and again time after time after time in the same epic to the point where it becomes tempting to skip ahead once the conflict is established because you pretty much know what's coming.
In fact, the adventures get so formulaic after a while, you may wonder if this is really a single epic, or something that was cobbled together from a lot of separate adventure stories. I have no idea what the answer is, but in the work handed down to us, the end implies it is a unified epic and that the crises were orchestrated from heaven to enable the Monk to become worthy of receiving the scriptures. But again, I can't swear this wasn't grafted on at a later time. One of the things that leads me to wonder about this being a unified epic is the way the Monk fails to even start to come to grips with Monkey's merits until the very end. To a modern Western reader, that defies belief, and having read other ancient Chinese epics, I'm not in a hurry to attribute such shallow characterization to the epic's different time and place. Also, the underdeveloped characterizations of Friar Sand and the horse lead me to wonder if they were developed in other segments of the story that got lost, or if the author intended to flash them out but never got around to it.
It's important to note that my speculations as to whether this is a unified work or something that was patched together is just that, personal speculation. I have absolutely no clue about the facts and haven't (at least not yet) even checked to see if there's any research pointing one way or another. What I'm suggesting to you, as a reader of this review, is to draw conclusions about the fact that I am so wrapped up in speculations like this. That tells you a lot about how the work is organized, and how reading it feels as you get beyond the 22-chapters of introductory material.
Clearly, though, the most intriguing character, and the one that makes the whole thing worthwhile is Monkey. His evolution from literature's most potent a**-hole to its most potent protector is riveting and addictive. It's a fascinating object lesson to anyone who has occasion to deal with difficult but talented people. The end of the story implies the monk needed to suffer to earn the right to get the scriptures. We modern folks, though, don't need to go through that. We can, if we wish, try to recognize the merit around us without constantly bringing ourselves to the brink of destruction.
Monkey - Journey to the West OverviewJourney to the West is one of the Greatest Classical Novels of Chinese literature. Originally published in the 1590s during the Ming Dynasty, by Wu Cheng'en.The novel is a mythical story of the legends around a Chinese Buddhist monk's quest to India to obtain Buddhist religious text. The monk and has four animal protectors- disciples - namely the Monkey King, Pigsy the Pig, a River Demon and a Dragon prince who acts as the monk's horse. These four characters have agreed to help the monk as an atonement for past sins.Part of the novel's enduring popularity comes from the fact that it works on multiple levels: it is an adventure story, a dispenser of spiritual insight, and an extended allegory in which the group of pilgrims journeying toward India stands for the individual journeying toward enlightenment.

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