Fish Cheeks by Amy Tan is a phenomenal story. In the story, Tan’s main point is to not be ashamed of where you come from by changing yourself and denying your background for the sake of other people around you. Tan introduces Robert, the minister, her mother and father. Tan begins the story telling the readers that she fell in love with the minister's son. The minister and his family were not Chinese, they were white. Tan’s mother and father invited the minister and his family, along with other family members, to a Christmas Eve dinner. The dishes Tan’s mother had prepared were the family’s homemade Chinese food, and Tan was ashamed. As the story progresses, Tan begins to tell the readers how the dinner went and how the life lesson stoked with her as she matured and learned the life lesson …show more content…
As the story continues, Tan goes on to say she’s embarrassed of her family and the heritage she comes from and most importantly she hates her personal image. In addition, Tan continues to use the rhetorical device called imagery. Tan uses imagery to help the people understand and visualize the story and what she is saying. Tan states, “She was pulling black veins out of the backs of freshly prawns.” Helping readers visualize what her mother is doing. Tan does not only mention this piece of imagery, she mentions so many more pieces of evidence such as “My father poked his chopsticks just below the fish eye and plucked out the soft meat. “Amy, you're my favorite,” he said, offering me the tender fish cheek. I wanted to disappear” this textual evidence is imaginary there for the strong words to help the readers imagine what is happening in the story. Last but not least, the main rhetorical device that holds the paper together is the
Authors use many different types of imagery in order to better portray their point of view to a reader. This imagery can depict many different things and often enhances the reader’s ability to picture what is occurring in a literary work, and therefore is more able to connect to the writing. An example of imagery used to enhance the quality of a story can be found in Leyvik Yehoash’s poem “Lynching.” In this poem, the imagery that repeatably appears is related to the body of the person who was lynched, and the various ways to describe different parts of his person. The repetition of these description serves as a textual echo, and the variation in description over the course of the poem helps to portray the events that occurred and their importance from the author to the reader. The repeated anatomic imagery and vivid description of various body parts is a textual echo used by Leyvik Yehoash and helps make his poem more powerful and effective for the reader and expand on its message about the hardship for African Americans living
In this short, but charming story, Amy Tan uses imagery to bring the story to life. With figurative language, the reader is immersed into the Chinese culture and can better relate to the characters. Tan main use of imagery is to better explain each character. Often instead of a simple explanation, Tan uses metaphors, similes, or hyperboles to describe the person, this way they are more relatable and their feelings better understood.
“ The horizon was the color of milk. Cold and fresh. Poured out among the bodies” (Zusak 175). The device is used in the evidence of the quote by using descriptives words that create a mental image. The text gives the reader that opportunity to use their senses when reading the story. “Somehow, between the sadness and loss, Max Vandenburg, who was now a teenager with hard hands, blackened eyes, and a sore tooth, was also a little disappointed” (Zusak 188). This quote demonstrates how the author uses descriptive words to create a mental image which gives the text more of an appeal to the reader's sense such as vision. “She could see his face now, in the tired light. His mouth was open and his skin was the color of eggshells. Whisker coated his jaw and chin, and his ears were hard and flat. He had a small but misshapen nose” (Zusak 201). The quotes allows the reader to visualize what the characters facial features looked like through the use of descriptive words. Imagery helps bring the story to life and to make the text more exciting. The reader's senses can be used to determine the observations that the author is making about its characters. The literary device changes the text by letting the reader interact with the text by using their observation skills. The author is using imagery by creating images that engages the reader to know exactly what's going on in the story which allows them to
The transition from childhood to adulthood can be challenging. There are many things to learn and let go. Sometime teenagers can dramatize certain events to make themselves seem defenseless. Amy Tan, Chinese-American author, makes her Chinese Christmas seem insufferable. In Tan’s passage “Fish Cheeks”, Tan uses diction and details to exemplify the indignity caused by her Chinese culture.
Being who you are is easier said than done. We all have heard this lesson before, but it is much harder to actually do this in front of friends, and relatives. In “Fish Cheeks” by Amy Tan, and “Taco Head” by Viola Canales, both narrators face the struggle to fit in. They come from smaller cultures rather than the larger American culture. In the end, both girls learn a valuable lesson to be independent, and to be proud of who you are. In “Fish Cheeks” and “Taco Head” the similar lessons the narrators learn is, to be proud of who you are. However, the stories are different because in “Fish Cheeks” being American on the outside is okay, but you must remain Chinese on the inside. In “Taco Head” the lesson teaches that
She uses pathos frequently throughout the essay because much of her purpose in writing this story ties into her emotional attachment to her mother. So a lot of the writing includes her trying to get across her personal feelings. A great example of pathos is when she describes a feeling of fulfillment when her mother approves of her book: “…I knew I had succeeded where it counted most when my mother finished reading my book and gave me her verdict: ‘So easy to read.’” (Tan 4). You understand here that Tan’s most important goal of writing is her mother, and much of the rest of the story appeals to pathos using stories of her
Piper’s use of imagery in this way gives the opportunity for the reader to experience “first hand” the power of words, and inspires the reader to be free from the fear of writing.
First, the story ¨Fish Cheeks¨ shows a story of how a girl named Amy “finds herself” through a holiday dinner. Amy has a crush on Robert, a 14 year old
In the story "A Pair of Tickets," by Amy Tan, a woman by the name of Jing-mei struggles with her identity as a Chinese female. Throughout her childhood, she "vigorously denied" (857) that she had any Chinese under her skin. Then her mother dies when Jing-Mei is in her 30's, and only three months after her father receives a letter from her twin daughters, Jing-Mei's half sisters. It is when Jing-mei hears her sisters are alive, that she and her dad take a trip overseas to meet her relatives and finally unites with her sisters. This story focuses on a woman's philosophical struggle to accept her true identity.
In the story, "Fish Cheeks" it talks about how Amy Tan's Chinese family invites an American boy's family over for dinner. Amy Tan wants to impress him and thinks that he wont like the food her mother made even though it is her favorite food. She can tell that he doesn't like the food and she is embarased. So, Amy wants to fit in.
Tan succeeds in her use of pathos as she manages to make her mother seem helpless. This is quite a feat, as her obvious strengths have already been displayed in situations such as when yelling at the stockbroker. Tan supports her depiction of her mother as a victim by bringing up how people “did not take her seriously, did not give her good service, pretended not to understand her, or even acted as if they did not hear her.” (37)
Mike and Sully had many memories. One of which was bringing a human into the monster world. Both Sully and Mike connected to this human named Boo. She was a toddler, that was not aware she was a part of the monster world, but she knew she loved Sully and Mike. When monsters found she had been living in their world, the monsters put her back into the human world, and they got rid of the door leading to her room. Monsters Incorporated going to be shut down soon, and employees were no longer granted access onto the premises. Due to Sully’s life long dedication to the scare factory, he was given the pieces to Boo’s shredded door and he was allowed into the building, despite the fact that it was soon to be demolished. Sully’s co-worker from his days in the factory, Randall, didn’t approve of this, and vowed to get in his way. After many extensive and sleepless days, he finally managed to put back together Boo’s door. Regardless of the fact that Sully had become decrepit and frail from his old age, he took the door back to
“Paper Menagerie,” by Ken Liu, is an emotional story of a selfish son and his interactions with his out-of-place mother, who had immigrated from Asia to be his father’s wife. Jack is a half-Chinese, half-American boy who lives in Connecticut. In the beginning of the story, he is very attached to his mother, but certain incidents with other kids make him want to be as distant as possible from his Chinese mom. He demands that his mom converts to being a “normal” white American mom and that he and his family should give up all Asian customs. This beautiful story shows that selfishly basing your actions on the need to fit in can harm yourself and others.
Signs of the depth of the narrator's mental illness are presented early in the story. The woman starts innocently enough with studying the patterns of the paper but soon starts to see grotesque images in it, "There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a...
Another rhetorical strategy incorporated in the poem is imagery. There are many types of images that are in this poem. For example, the story that the young girl shares with the boy about drowning the cat is full of images for the reader to see: