A symbol is a concrete object which stands for the abstract. Throughout Maxine Kingston's "The Woman Warrior", a multitude of symbols are utilized to subtly express the author's underlying messages. One of the most strikingly apparent symbols encountered in chapter 1 is the circle. "The round moon cakes and round doorways, the round tables of graduated sizes that fit one roundness inside another, round windows and rice bowls - these talismans had lost their power to …showed first 75 words of 770 total…

…showed last 75 words of 770 total…due to a power struggle, what would happen if women were to be abandoned on the same island? The story would surely be much less dramatic if that was the case. The reason of William Golding's lack of women in his novel is because he was creating a satire on masculinity, just as Maxine Kingston is doing. In both cases, women are depicted as self-sacrificing, caring individuals while men are portrayed as selfish, power-hungry brutes.