Mulan—Ba

Mulan’s relationship with Ba shapes how she understands both family honor and her own strength. His words return to her when exhaustion nearly defeats her, and later encouragement helps her recognize that the courage she has long measured against his example is also hers.

A Lesson Shared in the Courtyard

Mulan remembers Ba not through a long account of their family life, but through a specific act of helping. When she had tried, ashamed and tearful, to glue the village shrine statue back together, Ba helped her hold its broken pieces. As they worked, he told her, “Your job is to bring honor to your family,” and added, “Every day, you must rise up and continue.” The lesson joins two ideas: honor is a family obligation, and meeting it means continuing after something has broken. His advice is rooted in a practical moment of repair, not in an abstract speech.

That memory remains active for Mulan. During the struggle with the sea creature, after Lu Ting-Pin has driven the boat into the beast and the waves begin to calm, Mulan’s arms are failing as she clings to the gourd. In that moment of physical danger, she recalls Ba’s face and the shrine. His words repeat in rhythm with the rising and falling water. The remembered phrase becomes something she can draw on when she is close to collapse: she whispers that she is trying, even as she struggles to keep hold.

Ba as a Measure of Courage

When Lu Ting-Pin urges Mulan to hold on, she admits that she does not know if she can. He tells her that she is a mighty warrior and points to her part in defeating the sea creature. Mulan answers that she only helped, but the praise prompts her to think of Ba as a mighty warrior and to resolve to try to be like him. The exchange shows how she measures herself against her father: his example gives her an image of courage, while her own modest account of her contribution makes it difficult for her to claim that quality outright.

The scene also develops Ba’s earlier injunction to rise and continue. Mulan’s response is not a sudden triumph over exhaustion; she is still weary and dependent on the gourd for support. Instead, she tightens her arms around it and keeps going. The remembered lesson has become an action. Her perseverance honors the value Ba taught her, even before she can fully accept that she herself may embody it.

Inherited Words, Mulan’s Own Identity

Near the end, a healer addresses Mulan’s uncertainty by listing what she has done: thrown bladed needles, helped return an island to green, flown on an Immortal’s breath, slain the ten-thousandth demon with a peach-wood sword, and saved her sister and the Jade Rabbit. He tells her, “You are a mighty warrior.” This judgment echoes Lu Ting-Pin’s encouragement during the sea battle, but it reaches Mulan after her many deeds have made the description harder to dismiss. She still falters in response; the evidence of her actions does not immediately settle her sense of herself.

The healer then says that this is what she must not forget and releases her. Mulan, with one arm around Black Wind, looks down at the shadows on the lit ground. The healer’s shadow is long and thin; hers, with its resolute stance and broad shoulders, looks strong and powerful. She considers that it might be the shadow of a mighty warrior. The ending connects the identity she once approached through Ba’s example to a visible image of her own strength. When the healer disappears and she recognizes the fading rabbit ears as the Jade Rabbit, the counsel remains with her: persistence and honor are no longer only qualities she associates with her father, but qualities she is beginning to see in herself.