Rhetorical Devices In Chinese Cinderella

Have you ever wondered if there were other versions of Cinderella? Well there are, there isn’t just one version of Cinderella. Each version is a little bit different from each story because of the culture behind it. For example the “Cinderella” we know and love and the Ireland version the “Cinderlad”.The two cinderella stories, “Cinderlad” the Irish version and “Cinderella” the French version have both differences and similarities. Using the Motif “Damsel in distress” I can show that they are different & similar because of the culture they originated from and their social necessities.

Jane Yolen discusses the variations in Cinderella throughout history in America’s “Cinderella” Yolen began a career in publications as an editor and later became a professional writer, winning numerous awards and publishing over seventy novels. Yolen observes that the European Cinderella and the Asian Cinderella possess more strength than the helpless modern Cinderella. She attributes this evolution to cultural incorporations and mass market’s reproductions of the tale. American interpretations of Cinderella result in a lasting change to a dependent heroine. Yolen reveals many people are familiar with the changed Cinderella and not the former Cinderella. In Jane Yolen’s essay, America’s “Cinderella”, she denounces the debasement of women in today’s society by comparing the past Cinderella to modern Cinderella, characterizing Cinderella as reliant, and criticizing the example of Walt Disney’s Cinderella.

Adeline Yen Mah is a Chinese girl growing in knowledge with a wealthy family. Then, a new threat arrises... Niang! She is the evil stepmother that tries to burden Adeline with as much issues as she can. Adeline tries to conquer these problems with the help of her other loving family members. In the novel, Chinese Cinderella, by Adeline Yen Mah, the author shows that being unwanted can be overcome by consulting family. She proves this by showing the help that Adeline received from her Ye Ye (grandfather) and her Aunt Baba.

In the story chinese cinderella the main character Adeline faces a lot of adversity throughout the book. She faces the most her adversity at home with her parents and siblings being unfairly cruel toward her. She has a lot of courage for going through with all this pain and still staying optimistic about everything.

The central focus of this unit is to identify the elements of stories and how their themes may relate to each other in a variety of ways. Students will be guided in a variety of comparison and contrasting activities in order to gain understanding of main ideas, characters, and cultural themes across similar fairy tales from different cultures. This unit focuses on three different versions of Cinderella from different cultures. I chose to focus on the common elements of the fairy tales and the cultural differences because this was something the students were struggling with previously.

"Cinderella" is perhaps the most recognized fairy tale in history, one of the few that spans across generations and cultures. Every prominent culture in the world tells some similar version of this story of a poor girl going from rags to riches; over 700 versions have been accounted for worldwide. In America, numerous authors have penned their own version of the classic folktale. One of these is Tanith Lee, a prolific writer of stories for young adults. Lee cleverly found a way to include all of the traditional elements of the classic "Cinderella" tale, but added a new twist: Cinderella, or the character similar to her in this story, had malicious intentions for the prince, and her purpose throughout the tale was a malevolent one: revenge.

In “Conte” by Marilyn Hacker, Cinderella shows the reader a glimpse of her life after the childhood tale ends, a less happier ending than the original story implies. She feels trapped in a constant state of misery and boredom in the royal palace. Without life experience guiding her, Cinderella is in a dilemma caused by her ignorance of the potential consequences of her actions. With the use of irony, structure, and diction, “Conte” shows how innocence and naïveté result in regrettable mistakes that create life experience.

Chinese Cinderella, by Adeline Yen Mah is a heart-rendering autobiographical novel. Throughout the text, Adeline describes her cruel family and the trauma she was confronted with at school, trying to satisfy her heartless father with educational achievements. Together we relive the childhood life of Adeline through her words and hear, what it feels like to be a rejected and unloved daughter. Furthermore, Adeline owns a special quality that helps her to handle the cruelty of her upbringing and rise above many obstacles. Adeline has been always resilient. She is very strong and tackles everything that comes her way. By being friendless and having a pet duck as a friend, she distracts herself from her coldblooded reality.

Cinderella’s story is undoubtedly the most popular fairy tale all over the world. Her fairy tale is one of the best read and emotion filled story that we all enjoyed as young and adults. In Elizabeth Pantajja’s analysis, Cinderella’s story still continues to evoke emotions but not as a love story but a contradiction of what we some of us believe. Pantajja chose Cinderella’s story to enlighten the readers that being good and piety are not the reason for Cinderella’s envious fairy tale. The author’s criticism and forthright analysis through her use of pathos, ethos, and logos made the readers doubt Cinderella’s character and question the real reason behind her marrying the prince. Pantajja claims that

In the familiar more traditional version, Cinderella is a poor maid girl that, with the help of fairy godmother, gets a chance to meet prince charming. They fall in love, get married, and live happily ever after, and then what? What is a happily ever after? Is this even a realistic thought? In the dark comedic poem Cinderella, Anne Sexton forces the reader to examine this question. Utilizing literary devices such as tone, imagery, and style, Sexton encourages the reader to think about how silly and unlikely a fairy tale ending actually is.

In the autobiography Chinese Cinderella by Adeline Yen Mah, the narrator was influenced in many ways by the people around her. One character which influences the narrator’s life to a vast amount was her step-mother Niang. Her Aunt Baba also played a very big part on how Yen Mah turned out in her later and earlier years as well as everywhere in between. Her grandfather Ye-Ye was a constant support to Adeline Yen Mah.

The story of Cinderella has become a classic fairy tale, known around the world, and past down from generation to generation. Yet, over the years, the story has been rewritten to better relate to different cultures. While some things never change, authors still manage to convey different messages by making the story their own. This can be clearly seen when the Grimm brothers version of Cinderella is compared to Charles Perrault’s version of Cinderella. While the core of the story does not change, the moral, tone, and “magical” aspects of the two stories are clearly shaped by the different cultures in which they were written in.

Cinderella is a fairytale for children that displayed love, loss and miracles; however, when it is further analyzed, it has a deeper meaning. Cinderella is a story about a young girl who became a servant in her own home after her father remarried a malicious woman with two spoiled daughters. She was humiliated and abused yet she remained gentle and kind. She received help from her fairy godmother to go to the prince’s ball after her stepmother rejected her proposal. Cinderella and the Prince fell madly in love but she had to leave at twelve o’clock and forgot to tell him her name but she left her glass slipper behind. He sent his servants to find her and Cinderella was the only maiden in the kingdom to fit into the shoes. She

The book Chinese Cinderella, written by Adeline Yen Mah has four main themes. They are: family & relationships, abandonment & loneliness, self-esteem and history. The author Adeline Yen Mah, also wrote the book Falling Leaves but Chinese Cinderella was written for younger audiences. Chinese Cinderella is actually an autobiography, not a fairy tale. Adeline (the protagonist) has to work for her dreams, not by wishing from a fairy godmother. This book was set in the 1900’s (1941-1952). At that time WW2 was happening making Adeline’s life harder. The moral of this book would be that no matter your circumstances, you can work hard and achieve your dreams. This book is really captivating and it tells the reader not to underestimate anyone. That’s why I think this is an amazing book for everyone to read.

In my short analysis of “Cindarella”, understanding the basic concepts of the story was not as easy as I had once predicted. The author Elisabeth Panttaja explains in her essay different views and ideas in the sense that Cinderella is successful because of the magical powers created by her dead mother. The author tells that “It is not suprising . . . that modern criticism of (Cinderella) . . . has been so strangely indifferent to the roles that Cinderella’s mother plays in the story.” This to my knowledge is giving me a different view on how people thought Cinderella acted to the situations that occurred.