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Research on parents'expectations
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Challenges of Life
Jerry is a young boy in, the story of “Through the Tunnel.” He has a very big
challenge which is swimming through a tunnel. By swimming through the tunnel he
will be able to prove to the older boys and especially to himself that he can reach his
goal if he sets his mind to it. Jing-mei and her mother from the story “Two Kinds,”
also have a couple of challenges they must face. In this story, the mother is so eager
for her daughter to excel, that she pushes and pushes until the daughter finally
pushes back.
Jerry wants to do something very challenging. He wants to swim through a
long tunnel, but must hold his breath some throughout his journey. When he sees
boys (older boys) diving into the water, lasting a long time under water, and coming
out a couple of meters away, he tries to so the same thing. It seems to be very easy
for them. Jerry tries to do this a couple of times, but he is not successful. After his
unsuccessful attempts he decides to practice holding his breath for a long time before
trying it again. “A controlled impatience makes him wait.”
In the story of “Two Kinds,” a mother tries to make her daughter do things
that she is not interested in doing. Jing-mei had always head her mother talking
about “America” and how wonderful and different life would be once they arrived.
Jing-mei never liked the plans her mother had for her. Her mother wanted her to be
a perfect kid. (Or at least what her mother thought o perfect child ought to be like.)
Jing-mei’s greatest challenge was to inform her mother that she wasn’t interested in
being the perfect child. She simply wished to be accepted as herself. One day
Jing-mei performed a musical piece on a piano at a talent show. After her horrible
performance, father, mother, and Jing-mei drove home disappointed, especially
mother. Jing-mei went to her room went they arrived home. Her mother went to
Jing-mei’s room shouting and yelling at her about her awful performance. talked
back and told her mother that is this wasn’t for her to be so controlling of her life.
“Why don’t you like me the way I am?” exclaimed Jing-mei.
As I mentioned previously, Jing-mei’s mother wanted her daughter to be a
perfect child. She sent her to piano lessons with a retired piano teacher. Mother
cleaned houses for a living. She would find magazines in the houses she worked for.
Both of these excellent stories illustrated how parents can set up their children for failure. Parents may want the best for their children, and they want them to be smart and successful, but it does not always turn out that way. Ultimately, Jing-mei was a disappointment to her mother but finally found contentment as an adult. Children want their parents' love and support, their attention, and unconditional love. Henry did not have any of those things, and he grew up to be as emotionally distant as his parents. As adults, we can only try to analyze our own upbringing and avoid unintended consequences in raising our own children.
“Only two kinds of daughters,” “Those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind!”(476). When a mother pushes her daughter to hard, the daughter rebels, but realizes in the end that their mothers only wanted the best for them and had their best interest at heart. In the beginning, Jing-mei, is “just as excited as my mother,”(469). Jing-mei eagerly hoped to make her mother proud. However, her mother’s obsession with becoming a prodigy discouraged Jing-mei.
In the movie, The Voices, Jerry (the main character) seems like a friendly and happy guy. He functions normally until we see a scene where he is having a conversation with his pets. He lives with
I believe that Jing-Mei should have told the truth from before, instead of telling them later. For, this proves to Jing’s half sister’s unnecessary hope of seeing their mother again. If Jing would have told them earlier it would have been less heartbreaking, although it didn’t necessary mess up their joyful reunion; it might have psychologically affected her half sisters more than it would have done if they found out earlier.
Jing-mei 's mother wants Jing-mei to be a prodigy and get popular. Thus, the mother rents a piano for Jing-mei to help her achieve this. Many years later, Jing-mei finds the piano in a broken state, so she decides to have it repaired. She starts playing the song she used to play, “Pleading Child.” But to the right of “Pleading Child,” she finds a second song named “Perfectly Contented.” She starts to play both songs, “And after I [Jing-mei] had played them both a few times, I realized they were two halves of the same song.” (6) Jing-mei’s mother tells Jing-mei that there are two kinds of people: the respectful kind and the disrespectful kind. At that time, Jing-mei also finds out that there are two kinds of people inside her. She could choose to be the kind where the person is a prodigy and respectful, or be the kind that is ugly in the eyes of people. When she plays “Pleading Child” and “Perfectly Contented,” Jing-mei realizes that her identity had changed completely because of her laziness and beliefs. Jing-mei learns that there are two kinds of people in the world, and she should choose the right
Woo cleans the house herself and no longer has a housekeeper. With the money she saved, she hired Mr. Chong, an ancient piano teacher, who can barely hear and whose eyes are too dulled to tell when Jing-mei messes up. He is so genuine that Jing-mei feels guilty and picks up the basic skills, but she is so bent on not pleasing her mother that she continues to purposefully lack in her efforts. She hates the piano. She hates the fact that her mother is shaping her identity. She hates that her mother forces it upon her. She hates that it's everything she isn’t: disciplined, elegant, and most of all controlled. Jing-mei wants to be who she wants to be, and with the piano around, she only continues to be who her mother wants her to be, but she can not tell her mother this. She is supposed to play a piece called “Pleading Child” which is a “simple, moody piece that sounded more difficult than it was”. Even though she had not practiced and didn't know the piece, she played anyway. Halfway through, she began to realize how awful she was. The silence that followed her performance and her parent’s disappointed looks unfolded the undeniable truth, Jing-mei was not a piano
She honored her parents as she should, but longed for them to pass. In the beginning of the story she said "I had never expected my parents to take so long to die.” She had taken care of them all of her life she was in her fifty’s and her parents in their ninety’s. She was ready to live and break free of all the rules and duties put upon her, they were like chains binding her and holding her down. She was ready to explore to go on journeys and adventures she was already aging all she wanted was to be free. Her parents’ death let her run free, she left Hong Kong to start over and maybe find love, in any way possible, maybe even through food or luxuries. She wanted to be rebellious of her parents I’m sure she knew they wouldn’t approve but she didn’t care she wanted change. All her life she had followed so many rules, she had to fight to teach, to learn, to be with friends, her fight was finally over. She now had no one to rebel against, she now had the freedom to
"My mother believed you could be anything you wanted to be in America" (491). This ideology inspired Jing-mei’s mother to work hard to create a better life for herself and her family in a new country. The search of the American dream exerts a powerful influence on new arrivals in the United States. However, realizing that they may not achieve the dream of material success and social acceptance, parents tend to transfer that burden to their children. It is a burden where dreams usually fall short of expectations.
For many of us growing up, our mothers have been a part of who we are. They have been there when our world was falling apart, when we fell ill to the flu, and most importantly, the one to love us when we needed it the most. In “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan, it begins with a brief introduction to one mother’s interpretation of the American Dream. Losing her family in China, she now hopes to recapture part of her loss through her daughter. However, the young girl, Ni Kan, mimics her mother’s dreams and ultimately rebels against them.
Since "You could be anything you wanted to be in America" (Tan 348) Jing-Meis' mother thought that meant that you had to be a prodigy. While that makes "Everything [sound] too simple and too easily achieved; [Jing-Mei] does not paint a picture of her mother as ignorant or silly" (Brent). In fact, in the beginning, Jing-Mei and her mother are both trying to "Pick the right kind of prodigy" (Tan 349). "In the beginning, [she] was just as excited as [her] mother,"(Tan 349) she wanted to be a prodigy, she wanted to "become perfect [she wanted her] mother and father to adore [her]"(Tan 349). As she strived to achieve perfection she and her mother would try many different things to try and find the "right kind of prodigy" (Tan 349).
Jing-mei Woo has to become a member of the Joy Luck Club in place of her mother, Suyuan Woo, who passed away. Before Suyuan's passing Jing-mei does not know much about her mother, as the story continues to develop Jing-mei realizes how much she did not know about her mother and learns more and more new things about her on her journey of finding her sisters. “Your father is not my first husband. You are not those babies” (26), this quote is from Suyuan Woo and shows Jing- mei that her mother has a lot of secrets that she does not know about. “Over the years, she told me the same story, except for the ending, which grew darker, casting long shadows into her life, and eventually into mine” (21). This quote shows how Jing-mei did not know much
believe it. In the story through the tunnel, jerry is an 11 year old boy with his mom on vacation
She sees the opportunities that America has to offer, and does not want to see her daughter throw those opportunities away. She wants the best for her daughter, and does not want Jing-Mei to ever let go of something she wants because it is too hard to achieve. "America is where all my mother's hopes lay. . .There were so many ways for ... ...
The two pieces of textual evidence I have to support this claim are both from paragraph #67 in the reading. The first one is whenever Jing-mei and her mother get into an argument about not wanting to play piano anymore. Jing-mei's mother shouts “Only two kinds of daughters!” and then she goes on to say “Those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind!” These two pieces of evidence from the text are crucial to the story as a whole. They are important because Jing-mei’s mother wants Jing-mei to follow the chinese culture, and play instruments, and to be a talented young girl like the ones on T.V. While Jing-mei’s mom wants her to follow the chinese culture, Jing-mei is growing up in america, and wants to follow her own mind, and she wants to do her own thing. This causes big conflict between the two during the story. So her mom does kinda force culture onto Jing-mei and that’s where culture is noticed, but Jing-mei also has personal experiences at school that make her want to express her own thoughts and be herself and do what she wants to do, making her not listen to her mom that
...ith Jing Mei and her mother, it is compounded by the fact that there are dual nationalities involved as well. Not only did the mother’s good intentions bring about failure and disappointment from Jing Mei, but rooted in her mother’s culture was the belief that children are to be obedient and give respect to their elders. "Only two kinds of daughters.....those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind!" (Tan1) is the comment made by her mother when Jing Mei refuses to continue with piano lessons. In the end, this story shows that not only is the mother-daughter relationship intricately complex but is made even more so with cultural and generational differences added to the mix.