The Journey to the West: Volume I

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. What is allegory? How is allegory different from and similar to metaphor and symbolism? What examples of allegory have you read or watched? 

Teaching Suggestion: Journey to the West is a great adventure story, but it is also an allegory for important facets of Buddhist thought. Students may already understand a basic definition of allegory; they can be asked to provide their own definitions, activating their prior knowledge, before they are offered the first resource offered below. This first resource will help them refine their understanding of the term so that they understand both what it has in common with similar terms and how it is distinct from them. You might offer them this resource before asking them to list—and possibly discuss—various examples that they have encountered in their own reading and viewing. Then they can practice uncovering the allegorical meaning of a story with the Thomas King short-short story “Totem.”

• This entry from LiteraryDevices.net defines and gives examples of allegory.
• This short story by Thomas King offers a clear example of an allegory.

2. Where did Buddhism originate? What is its history in China? What are the main tenets of Buddhism?

Teaching Suggestion: Tips on preparing students for this question or discussing after they’ve answered.

• This introduction to Buddhism from Stanford University offers a basic overview of key ideas.
• This article from the Asia Society is about the historical Xuanzang, who was the inspiration for Journey to the West.

Short Activity

In order to better understand the allegory of Journey to the West, you will need some detailed information about four specific aspects of Buddhism. In this activity, you will research and present one of the following concepts to a small group:

• Anātman
• Āyatana
• The five hindrances
• The three poisons

After all of these concepts have been presented, your group will discuss the relationship of these concepts to human suffering and the relief of suffering.

Teaching Suggestion: You may want to divide the class into groups of four and assign each group member a different one of the four concepts to research and present. If your number of students is not divisible by four, this is an ideal opportunity to pair up students that you suspect will benefit from assistance with the assignment with more-able partners. Students will need some guidance from you about how thorough you expect their presentations to be and whether you would like any collectible documentation of their research—a list of sources, notes, etc.

Personal Connection Prompt

This prompt can be used for in-class discussion, exploratory free-writing, or reflection homework before reading the novel.

If you were going to write an allegorical story about your personal beliefs about how to live a happy and moral life, what are three characters you might include? What would each represent? What is one allegorical event they might experience together, and what would it represent?

Teaching Suggestion: The values expressed through Journey to the West’s allegory may or may not be values the students hold themselves. The intention of this prompt is to give students an outlet for expressing their own values while demonstrating to them the complexity of conveying values allegorically. Whether they appreciate the tenets of Chinese religion and philosophy expressed in the text or not, this exercise will increase their comprehension as well as their appreciation for the text’s artful use of allegory.

Differentiation Suggestion: Students who struggle with abstract thought may have difficulty understanding how to create fictional characters who represent something in the real world and how an event might be allegorical. If you have students who might struggle in this way, consider leading the class through an example of how to create one allegorical character and one allegorical event before asking them to complete this prompt.