index

• Historical context of the novel:

• Historic context.
• Previous novels.
• Progress of the work.
• Sün WûKüng:
e From rebellious monkey to enlightened.
• Zhü Bä jiè
• The warrior pig.
• Shä WuJing
• Friar of the sand.
Historic context
• The story is based on historical facts, Xuánzàng himself (c. 602)
(whose more folkloric name is Tripitaka) existed and, motivated by
the lack of quality of the texts of the time (due to their poor quality of
translation), he went to Cháng 'än in 629 even though the emperor
himself banned because the borders were closed, he was helped by
many Buddhist sympathizers, he traveled on a journey that took him
through Gansu, Qinghai to Kumul (Hami), continuing through
Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan until he reached Gandhara,
he reached India in 1 year , then traveled through the Indian
subcontinent for about 13 years, studying in Nalanda and visiting
various points of importance within Buddhist culture.
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Historical context II
• Xuánzàng left India in 643 and returned to Cháng 'än in 646, in that
year he asked for an interview with the emperor and he forgave him
for not having listened to him, he joined the Da'Ci monastery (the
monastery of the Great Grace Maternal) and wrote his story with the
help of the emperor, he created an institution “Yuhua Gong” (The
Monastery of Bright Jade) that was going to be in charge of translating
the texts that he had brought.
• His commissioned work in the translation of the materials he had
brought caused him to be elevated to the position of founder of “The
School of Dharma Characters.”
• He died on March 7, 664
 Facts about the novel I
• The story itself dates back to the Ming period, it also involves the creation
of an entire town just like the Chinese wall, since many creators were
involved, before this work there were other previous ones, and until Wá
Chéngën appeared the work did not appear. It had a structure, something
similar to what happened in Greece with the Iliad and the Odyssey.
• The time used in this novel is not easy to understand for Westerners, it is
both relative and absolute, and as in the other two great novels of the time
(At the Margins of the Water and in The Romance of the Three Kingdoms,
the The narrative progresses slowly and hundreds of characters coexist...
• Their time is not a time that can be seen from the scene. It is rather a time
conceived from the place of knowledge and its irregular and often erratic
breath.
• The time used in the novel is taken in the image of a spiral, its first circle is
the widest (it touches on the creation of the universe) and little by little it
becomes narrower and narrower.
 Facts about the novel II
•Inspired by remote Buddhist legends about the travels of
Xuánzàng and the Yuan and Ming plays based on him, the
novel is not alien to the epic tone, although it is an epic so
demystifying that it would have to do more with the
Greeks than with the Greeks. theory of ironic distancing
that writers like Döblin.
•And like Döblin's epic, Journey to the West draws a
dialectic of light in its fight against all the powers of
shadows. Dialectic implicit in all the protagonists and
especially in the Monkey King, in which the Chinese of
Mao's time wanted to see, with the simplicity that
characterized them, "the struggle of the people against
difficulties as well as their persistent challenge to
authority." feudal".
And to finish this part of the exhibition I have to say
that each of the characters symbolizes a force (fire,
air, earth, wood and water), that is, each one, they are
all needed and all of them are destroyed in a certain
way, which exposes an internal balance within the
protagonists.
The higher a character's Tao, the stronger their
weapon.
The insults used by the characters are nothing more
than the exposition of the level of “hsiou-Tao” of the
character itself.
 Summary
•The work begins with the birth of the universe and Sün
WûKüng, he learns Tao due to his desire for immortality, after
a time and thanks to his power he is called to occupy a place in
heaven as “Pì-mâ-wën”, but this discontent rebels, and begins
to wreak havoc in heaven, after a while they offer him a more
important position in heaven again, he gladly accepts but after
a while he does his thing again. They try to punish him but
they only make him stronger. He once again wreaks havoc in
the sky until Buddha manages to catch him, as punishment he
confines him inside a mountain and as punishment he has iron
balls.
• From this point the story begins to talk about Tripitaka, how
he became a monk... his adventure, other companions and a
lot of adventures.
 Tripitaka
• He is a Buddhist monk. To save his life, his mother cut off one of his
toes as soon as he was born and “abandoned” him in the course of a
river. She tied a splint to his back and let the current carry him away.
He was lucky enough to stop. with a Buddhist monk from a nearby
temple who educated him until the age of 18.
• When he reached that age and due to an altercation in the monastery,
he decided to go look for his parents and thus his journey began...
• As such, he is a monk and does not know how to defend himself very
well (remember that according to the novel, China was infested with
very dangerous monsters), and for that reason Guanyin (Kwan-Jin) is
going to make Tripitaka go meet his companions. journey.
 Sün WKüng
As I already explained to you before, the case of W û K ü ng is very special
and in the course of the trip the goddess Guanyin puts a kind of diadem on
his head that can be tightened by Tripitaka whenever WûKüng misbehaves
and he will be known as “The Headache Sutra.”
His set of qualities, good humor on the trip, an intelligent mind...makes
him a kind of trickster hero, basically he is the clown of the group and from
his jokes he manages to raise or maintain the group's morale...
 Zhu Bájié
• story of Zhü Bä jiè is a story of misfortune...he was a kind of immortal who
The
during a celebration drank too much and began to flirt with the moon goddess
(Chang'e), consequently for his daring he was punished by having her He was
reincarnated as a mortal, but due to an error on the reincarnation wheel he
ended up becoming a half-pig monster, half-human.
In addition to this, he was very gluttonous, which is why he ate
various
pilgrims passing by, met the Gao family, married their daughter. Later,
when the peasants discovered that he was a monster, they threw him
out of there with the help of Tripitaka and WûKüng.
This character also joined the group after being defeated
 Sha WuJng
• This guy is another of the "fallen from grace", his case is even more
peculiar than that of the pig, because he dropped a glass in a type of
celebration, the Jade Emperor made him reincarnate into an
abomination, too He ate passing pilgrims, and was also forgiven by the
goddess Kwan Jin.
• Shä is the most obedient, logical and political of the three disciples,
while WûKüng plays the monkey, and Zhü only thinks about eating,
Shä worries about Tripitaka, he does not have any special
characteristics, which is why he is seen as a character. minor
sometimes.
• Despite this, when the trip ends he is rewarded by being Arhat, thus
becoming more important within the sphere of the gods than Zhü Bä
jiè . But it has less spirituality than WûKüng or Tripitaka