Examples of women overcoming male supremacy and gaining power can be found in Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Márquez and A Thousand Cranes by Yasunari Kawabata , both of which include strong women in a male-dominated society. However, while Márquez's Maria Alejandrina Cervantes gains her power from her sexuality, Kawabata's Chikako Kurimoto achieves hers through her asexual nature. Say no to plagiarism. Get a Custom Essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essay Although Maria Alejandrina Cervantes is a woman, she is one of the most powerful and influential members of her city. Cervantes is captivating, almost bewitching the men of the community. Santiago describes her as charming and elegant and says that men were dazzled by her (Márquez 64). This magical diction connects her to the idea of ​​this mystical and hypnotic charm that she seems to exert on her companions. A few lines later, Santiago states that Cervantes was “the most helpful in bed, but she was also the strictest” (Márquez 64). After luring men into her bed, she demands power and respect. The narrator describes this cycle with his fabled statement: “A hawk pursuing a warrior crane can only hope for a life of pain” (Márquez 65). The image of the warrior crane perfectly embodies Cervantes, as she is beautiful and elegant like a crane, while controlling power in a warlike manner. Men, like Santiago and the narrator himself, fervently “pursue” her but cannot really hold her back, because she lives in “a house with open doors” (Márquez 64). This fruitless pursuit consequently leaves them unsatisfied in a “life of pain.” The pious images associated with Cervantes also add to his powerful status. The narrator describes that after the city wedding, he returned to “the apolistic fold of [Cervantes]” (Márquez 5). This, along with the name "Maria" which perhaps links her to Mary Magdalene, another woman with "open doors", links her to Christianity and biblical status. Santiago also describes her later in his grieving process as a “Turkish houri” (Márquez 77), a goddess of the Arab paradise. This biblical and divine status comes with a feeling of power over others. Thus, thanks to her enchanting charm, her warrior rigor and her divine status, she achieves power over her male counterparts. Similar to Cervantes, Chikako Kurimoto is also a woman of power in a male-dominated society. The fierce, animalistic diction associated with Kurimoto suggests a great amount of power and control. It is associated with words such as prowled (Kawabata 14) and clawed (Kawabata 16), suggesting the image of a fierce cat. Additionally, she is linked to motifs of poison and venom throughout the novel, connecting her to a snake. Both animal images contain strong, dangerous language and give the reader a sense of power. This power is perhaps best seen in his relationship with Kikuji Mitani. As a boy, Mitani was scarred by the image of Kurimoto's horrible birthmark. He states, “He could sometimes even imagine that his own destiny was involved in it” (Kawabata 8). Mitani's entire life, at least in his eyes, has been controlled by a single haunting image of this woman. Kurimoto gained control of his destiny and thus power over him through an accidental glimpse of his deformed body. She takes control of her life not only psychologically through the birthmark, but also in a physical sense, by taking on the role of her mother. Mitani describes that “[Kurimoto] rather than his mother had taken care of the cottage during his father's lifetime” (Kawabata 40). A few.