Critical Analysis of Giac Duyen in The Tale of Kieu - Essay Example

I say this because Giac Duen is the only character whose religiosity represents the Buddhist institutional belief through her actions. Being the embodiment of Buddhist virtues, a Buddhist nun Giac Duen appears to be friendly, kind-hearted and compassionate to distressed Kieu. Indeed her friendly guardianship seems to fill up the vacuum of a religious authority that the medieval Vietnamese literary tradition often required. Du does not tell us much about the prioress’s past. Yet she appears to be self-evident because of her admirable religiosity and her actions accordingly.

Indeed at times, her humanity surpasses her religiosity also. Ultimately her religiosity as well as her universal humanity makes her an outstanding figure, in the poem, which serves as an instrument that assists Kieu to get relief of the karmic retribution. In the story ‘The Tale of Kieu” Nguyen Du shows that a true friend’s assistance and love can make one successful in the end and the prioress Giac Duyen is the perfect example of such friendship. Giac’s relationship with Kieu grows on the basis of fellow-feeling, compassion and humanity.

Though in the story Giac appears as a representative of the Buddhist religious institution, she is essentially a universal humanitarian who could surpass the boundary of her religious restriction. When Kieu flees from Hoan, the tyrant wife of Thuc, and reaches the prioress’s home, she compassionately provides her with shelter and food. This humanitarian face of Giac could have been overshadowed by her religiosity, when Kieu discloses her miserable past. But it did not happen in reality. Learning about Kieu’s past suffering, sorrow and life of prostitution, she was swinging between her compassion for the distressed girl and her religious fear about Kieu’s sin in her early life.

Indeed her compassion wins over her religious fear. Even though she believes that Kieu’s suffering is the result of her Karma in early life, she has tried to minimize her agony. She advises Kieu to walk the noble path of a prioress. She says, “The Buddha's gate is open wide to all. But things I can't foresee are what I dread. I'd sorely grieve if something struck you here. Plan far ahead and flee - you'd be unwise to sit and wait till waters reach your feet” (line 2076). Kieu the protagonist is only able to change her destiny through the kind-hearted Buddhist nun by the name of Giac Duen.

And consequently, Kieu is highly induced by the way of life of Giac and meanwhile Giac’s dominance starts playing with more priority over Kieu even her lover and husband too. Kieu took very little time to win the support from Giac. Knowing Kieu’s destiny, Giac responds to Kieu for helping her by prediction and to save Kieu from her sorrow and distressed condition which she experienced a lot in her early life. Giac also helped Kieu from jealous of Miss Hoan. So, Giac is somehow appeared as a savor for Kieu.

Giac, a strong character of integrity and loyalty tries to recover Kieu from the experience of her harsh destiny with every time assistance even with the absence of Kieu, made her great one and high character and the centered women in the story. We see that Giac didn’t leave Kieu even after her successive events of her life including death of