The play M. Butterfly by David Henry Hwang deals with a vast number of different topics. The author touches on the themes of love, deceit, make ego and femininity, homosexuality, stereotypes of Asian women, imperialism, and cultural fetishization. They all are very interesting to discuss, but the topic of self-deception and memory in the play is selected for this discussion board post.
It is common for people to rely on their memories of specific events and judge the situation based on their perceptions. In M. Butterfly, the events are described by the main character, Rene Gallimard, who is serving a sentence in prison and decides to share his story with the audience. Therefore, the latter learns about the events primarily from Gallimard, and it is evident that his own ideas and views impact the reality of the situation. What is more, he is not satisfied with all aspects of the love story that happened years ago, and Gallimard desperately attempts to alter the events in his imagination. It is possible to say that all people are familiar with self-deception. When one wants to change the past, the only way to do that is to use imagination.
To tell the story, Gallimard asks Song for help, and the audience can see Song as part of Rene’s imagination. Song describes some events without Rene’s participation or adds comments and information that Gallimard himself does not want to mention. It is interesting that, being a figment of imagination, Song is still uncontrolled by Rene. Sometimes, the latter tries to hide the truth or embellish the situation, remove some event from his memory, or vice versa – prolong it. Overall, the audience can see the significant impact of self-deception and imagination on Rene’s memory.