The Journey to the West by Wu Cheng'en

The Journey to the West by Wu Cheng'en

Superiority of Human Spirits to Animal Spirits

Wu Chengen was born in Kiangsu province in eastern China. His father was a merchant who loved literature, and Wu was noted for his own literary accomplishments at a very young age. Nevertheless, he repeatedly failed the arduous examinations for the imperial civil service. Finally, at the advanced age of 63, he became a provincial magistrate, only to be imprisoned two years later on groundless charges of corruption. After clearing Wu's name, the imperial court offered him another post, which he refused, preferring to devote the remainder of his life to writing (Finkelman, 2009).

Wu Chengen composed many works of verse that convey strong emotions. Two volumes of his poems survive, most of them discovered in imperial palaces in Kiangsu many years after his death. He is best known as the presumed author of The Journey to the West [Hsi Yu Chi], an epic prose novel that appeared anonymously in 1592, 10 years after his death. Since then, The Journey to the West has appeared in many different forms and been the inspiration if not the source for various works. A picture book of the story was published in 1806. In 2000 the movie Lost Empire, based upon Wu's book, was released. It tells the story of journalist Nick Orton's search for the lost manuscript of Hsi Yu Chi. The book also served as the basis of the Japanese television series Saiyuki (Monkey, also known as Monkey Magic), which ran from 1978 to 1990. Finally, the computer-animated video Monkey (1996) by Miles Inada and Evan Carroll is also based upon The Journey to the West, as is the popular anime Dragonball series (Fradin, 1998).

Critical Analysis

Like all Chinese novels of the Ming dynasty period, The Journey to the West was written in the vernacular rather than the formal, officially accepted classical style, and was probably published anonymously to protect its author's reputation. The theory that Wu was the novel's true author appears to have originated in his home province during the 16th century. Not all modern scholars are convinced of Wu's authorship, as there were similar published tales that existed before Wu's version. However, most scholars believe the poet's lifelong "love of strange stories [and] popular novels" (as he wrote in a preface to a collection of classical short stories) is significant evidence in his favor (Gerges, 2006).

Wu was inspired to write Journey to the West by the epic pilgrimage of the 7th-century Buddhist monk Hsuan-Tsang (596?-664), who traveled on foot to India, today known as the birthplace of Buddhism. Hsuan-Tsang walked for many years along the fabled Silk Road in search of his faith's sacred texts, called the Sutra. After finding them, he returned to China and began translating the scriptures into Chinese. By Wu's time, Hsuan-Tsang's pilgrimage had become the subject of many fantastic legends, which had already inspired a short verse novel and a six-part drama titled ...