In the closing lines of M. Butterfly, Gallimard, the unfortunate French diplomat/accountant turned spy, says: "I have a vision. Of the East" (92) . At the time he talks about his belief that beautiful women exist, as he thought his “Butterfly” was, but this is indicative of the colonial impulse. Colonization becomes possible because one society can characterize another society in ways that make colonization seem like a positive endeavor. As Said observes, the characterization of other cultures, such as the East or Africa, is carried out in the popular sphere through works of art, literature and theater. Indeed, books, plays, poems, and short stories are just some of the forms used to indoctrinate the masses of a colonizing nation with the logic and impulse to colonize. As if to underline this point, one way to rebel against colonization is to deform the colonizer's tool system to support the cause of liberation. The strategy seems to be especially popular in theater, where there are two stellar examples of postcolonial literature, Aime Cesaire's A Tempest and David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly. These plays are rewritten versions of Shakespeare's The Tempest and Puccini's opera Madame Butterfly, respectively, and retain the same characters and basic plot elements. Both Shakespeare's and Puccini's works helped create symbols of other cultures: Caliban is a black devil and Cio-Cio San is the gentle and beautiful "Butterfly". These characterizations have become stereotypes in Western culture and have formed, or at least mirrored, the logic of colonization. To make these pieces work against the notion of colonization, Cesaire and Hwang must significantly alter their content. They do this, and they also avoid imitating the style... middle of paper..., and the victories depicted in these plays are not a large-scale liberation, so it is even more difficult to see the correct path.The stories that tell us we tell constitute our world. Just as Nick Redstocking's stories created a Native American dialect that never existed, The Tempest and Madame Butterfly created characters that became symbols of entire cultures. The power of stories is especially evident when we look at the role our art and literature played in imperialism. Fanon would say that the way to overthrow a physically present governing force is through violence. Hwang and Cesaire exert similar violence with the pieces that keep us imprisoned in false notions of the other. It is only through the acquisition of these works, their appropriation and their reconstruction, that we can free ourselves psychologically from the logic and impulses of the colonizer..