Environmental Force, Transcendence, and Freedom in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: On the Mystery of Jen’s Jumping off Wudang Mountain

In Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, there is a complex relationship between characters and their surroundings. One dominant power is the environmental force, which affects these people’s decisions and behaviors, either negatively or positively. Jen, as the main character, attempts to transcend her civilized society by wandering into the opposite world, the wilderness. Yet in both civilized and wild environments, Jen fails to gain her freedom. In the civilized world, she is constrained by her traditional gender role, according to which she has to submit herself to patriarchal elders. Leaving the civilized world for the wilderness, Jen wants to create a system of her own, according to which she has the power to dominate others. Despite her effort in maintaining the system, she is not successful in gaining her freedom, because she has to deal with her irrationality of attaining excessive power. A relinquishment of her delusion of power eventually leads Jen to realize how to have a self-sufficient sphere of her own. Through the symbolic act of jumping from the physical Wudang Mountain to the spiritual world of eternity, Jen connects herself to the spiritual universe; accordingly, she gains her freedom with sacredness.