Allusions are crucial in “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan. An allusion is a reference to a well- known person, place, or event. “Two Kinds” uses a handful of them to enhance the meaning of the story and to help the reader grasp the events that are unfolding. Two major allusions in “Two Kinds” are Shirley Temple and Peter Pan. The references to Shirley Temple and Peter Pan are used by the narrator and characters to improve the story. Allusions are very important. First in “Two Kinds”, Peter Pan was brought up after the fixture of Jing-Mei’s failed Shirley Temple hairstyle. He was used as something related to a backup excuse for Jing-Mei without being introduced to the reader as so. “Peter Pan is very popular these days” (Tan 70). Peter Pan was used in
4. What two forms of figurative language does the author use in lines 20-23 of page 211 to make his writing more
There are many times in which a reader will interpret a piece of literature in a way that was completely unintended by the author. In her article, “In the Canon, for All the Wrong Reasons”, Amy Tan discusses people telling her the meaning behind her own stories, her experiences with criticism, and how this has affected her approach to writing moving forward. While this may seem ironic, considering the topic, I have my own interpretations of this article. Firstly, Amy Tan addresses how people will often tell her what her own work means and the symbolism in her writing.
The author uses many similes and metaphors throughout the book to enrich the description. Examples include:
Behind this form of allusion there is also examples of vivid image that make the poems come to live. Right away, in the first sentences I can picture the speaker performing
Allusion is defined as a figure of speech that alludes to popular, or well-known literature, event, setting, or person. (Jason Lineberger, Allusion in Literature) In ancient Greek mythology, Phaethon was the demigod son of Apollo who took on more responsibility than he was ready for-eventually forging his own downfall. Within the piece, the speaker tells his son the story of Apollo and Phaethon, tying ancient mythology to the present day. Similar to the way Phaethon believed he held the responsibility to drive the sun chariot in the archaic myths, the speaker’s son boasts the same mindset- believing he could drive the car; however, the speaker believes his son will follow the same path as Phaethon and fail in his attempts to drive the car. To illustrate this idea, the speaker begins by introducing Apollo and Phaethon’s parent-child relationship: “Apollo through the heavens rode/ In glinting gold attire/… His darling son was Phaethon, / Who begged to have a try.” (Lines 1, 2, 7, 8) The father, is the one in charge, carrying more responsibility and has to “… [hold the horses] to their frantic course” (line 5). Subsequently, the son is the one who wishes to carry more responsibility than
One of the literary techniques most prominently featured throughout the passage would be that of imagery. The author takes great care to interweave sentences comparing the traits
In the story “Two Kinds”, the author, Amy Tan, intends to make reader think of the meaning behind the story. She doesn’t speak out as an analyzer to illustrate what is the real problem between her and her mother. Instead, she uses her own point of view as a narrator to state what she has experienced and what she feels in her mind all along the story. She has not judged what is right or wrong based on her opinion. Instead of giving instruction of how to solve a family issue, the author chooses to write a narrative diary containing her true feeling toward events during her childhood, which offers reader not only a clear account, but insight on how the narrator feels frustrated due to failing her mother’s expectations which leads to a large conflict between the narrator and her mother.
Peter Pan has appeared in many adaptations, sequels, and prequels. Peter Pan first appeared in a section of The Little White Bird, a 1902 novel that was originally written for adults. In 1904, Peter Pan was turned into a play and since the play was so successful Barrie’s publishers, extracted chapters 13–18 of The Little White Bird and republished them in 1906 under a different title. This story was adapted and changed into a novel, was published in 1911 as Peter and Wendy, later the name changed to Peter Pan and Wendy, and then changed to Peter Pan, as we know it today. The tale that we are familiar with was even expanded more. In 1953 Walt D...
The purpose of Amy Tan’s essay, “Mother Tongue,” is to show how challenging it can be if an individual is raised by a parent who speaks “limited English” (36) as Tan’s mother does, partially because it can result in people being judged poorly by others. As Tan’s primary care giver, her mother was a significant part of her childhood, and she has a strong influence over Tan’s writing style. Being raised by her mother taught her that one’s perception of the world is heavily based upon the language spoken at home. Alternately, people’s perceptions of one another are based largely on the language used.
Booth, Alison, J. Paul Hunter, and Kelly J. Mays. The Norton Introduction to Literature. Shorter 9th ed. New York: Norton, 2006. A7
J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan is a children’s story about a boy who never wants to grow up, but this book portrays many themes, one in specific is the idealization of motherhood. Although the concept of the mother is idealized throughout Peter Pan, it is motherhood itself that prevents Peter Pan and others from growing into responsible adulthood.
He, according to Amy Billone, “participat[es] in a dreamworld that is at once the product of his greatest joys and his most awful fears” (Billone 190-191). This balance between his “greatest joys and his most awful fears” make it seem almost applicable to any child that they might be able to do the same. Children get easily caught up in the fantasy world and having a child represent all of it at once is in great demand. Throughout the entire novel, Peter’s flaws shine through and become an appeal to the lost boys and Wendy, but only for a while. This is due to the fact that “all children, except one, grow up (Barrie 1) and even though the appeal to join Peter in youth that lasts forever is tempting, maturation will always bring them to back. Peter represents the ultimate “dreamchild[]” (Billone 180) who will never grow up due to not being threatened by the truth that is age. His “stor[y] fit[s] within ‘a realm of literature which stares unblinkingly at the truth, which strides over flaws and inconsistencies, over the intellectual and social forces of our time, straight into the collective mind of its audience’” (Billone 181). This “truth” revolves around the fact everyone has to grow up, and Peter Pan is so appealing because it “confront[s] the distressing evaporation of innocence brought about by temporality itself” (Billone 181).
Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot are representative works of two separate movements in literature: Modernism and Post-Modernism. Defining both movements in their entirety, or arguing whether either work is truly representative of the classifications of Modernism and Post-Modernism, is not the purpose of this paper; rather, the purpose is to carefully evaluate how both works, in the context of both works being representative of their respective traditions, employ the use of symbolism and allusion. Beckett’s play uses “semantic association” in order to convey meaning in its use of symbolism; Woolf’s novel employs a more traditional mode of conveying meaning in its own use: that is, the meaning of symbols in Mrs. Dalloway is found within the text itself. Woolf’s novel exists as its own entity, with the reader using the text as the only tool in uncovering any symbolic meaning, while Beckett’s play stimulates the audience in such a way that the audience projects their own meaning in the symbols presented.
For example, the man focuses on the station and the track tracks, and the woman is focusing on the environment, namely the hills. The woman compares the hills to white elephants (Hemingway #). When the man does not seem to understand the comparison, she expounds upon the metaphor, saying, “[t]hey don’t really look like white elephants. I just meant the coloring of their skin through the trees,” but the man ignores and dismisses her comment (Hemingway #). The metaphor is representative of both the fetus and nature. The woman, representing nature, supports the conservation of the fetus, and the man, representing artificial, argues for its destruction. The man cites that they will be happy, and the woman is unsure (Hemingway #). This is a reflection on the central argument; mankind argues for the domination of nature, but people are unsure. O’Brien claims the comparison between the hills and the white elephant is important because white elephants are seen as “both ‘annoyingly useless’ and a precious gift, something to be discarded and something to be… cherished” (23). Thus, the hills represent the dichotomy in humanity; nature must be cherished, but
For Genette, the metaphorical contour of literary space is expressed in three senses of spatiality: “spatiality of language”, “spatiality of text”, and “semantic space”. The first sense shows that “each element is qualified by the place which it occupies in a total picture and by the vertical and horizontal relations which it maintains with the related and adjoining elements” (qtd in Kestner 1978: 113). The second sense of spatiality “does not resides only in horizontal relationships of proximity and succession, but also in those relationships called vertical, or transverse, of those effects of expectation, recollection, response, symmetry, perspective” ( qtd in Kestner 1978: 113). The third sense entails that each word takes on literary and figurative meanings, creating in this way “the semantic space between the apparent signified and the real signified abolishing the linearity of discourse” (qtd in Ubersfeld 1999: 99). Therefore, the polysemic multiplicity of the metaphorical contour of space in Genette can establish the tropes of parody and intertextuality as spatial devices. In this respect, Genette defines intertextuality as "a relationship of co-presence between two texts or among several texts," as in quotations, allusion, or plagiarism (Genette 1997: 5; Emphasis added). In brief, Frank and Genette deny any sense of referentiality between fiction and reality. For them, the text becomes a hermetic autonomous entity purged of any extra-textual reference. Pavel calls this “textolatry,” (Pavel 1986: 9) which has its origins in the Saussurian semiotic model advocating the self-referentiality of language. This “textolatry” is practiced by the structuralists and founded in principle by Derrida for whom “there is nothing outside the text” (Derrida 1974: