In "Two Kinds" by Amy Tan and "Everyday Use" by Alice Walker, the authors utilize physical protests as central purposes of the conflicts between the moms and their little girls. In "Two Kinds" the protest is a piano, and in "Everyday Use" it is a pair of heirloom quilts…………………………….. In Alice Walker's short story, the more seasoned little girl, Dee, abandons her nation home. She rehashes herself through instruction and life in the city. She changes her name from Dee to Wangero, and wears attire she connects with her African foundation. When she visits her youth home, the bedcovers turn into a question of contention. Dee inquires as to whether she can have them to use as inside decorations that delineate her legacy. Her mom dissents and tells …show more content…
These are the ladies Dee was named after; they are her actual predecessors. Dee is anxious about the possibility that Maggie will really utilize the blankets, consequently typically wrecking their legacy. The mother comprehends that Dee is the person who really wrecked her own history by changing her name and looks. Ironically in her scan for her past, Dee deletes it, while Maggie, through her straightforward life, is looking after it. The coverlets symbolize the family history that Maggie will go ahead………………………..In Amy Tan's "Two Kinds," the piano is typical of the mother's fantasies for her little girl in America. As indicated by the mother, "you could be anything you needed to be in America." Unfortunately, the little girl is not keen on being a kid wonder and declines to rehearse steadily on the piano. She humiliates her family in a fizzled execution, after which the piano sits unused in the mother's home. A crack creates amongst mother and the little girl, which is not settled until after the more seasoned lady's demise. On the little girl's thirtieth birthday, the mother advises her to take the …show more content…
In Amy Tan's short story "Two Kinds" (from a gathering of stories in her novel, The Joy Luck Club, which are about mother little girl connections), June (Jing-mei) and her mom (Suyuan Woo) battle since June needs to consider herself to be completely American and her mom considers her to be "Jing-mei," a Chinese-American young lady. Suyuan sees her girl as far as their Chinese legacy—not in dismissing American standards—which Suyuan respects—but rather the degree to which a mother is included in her little girl's life. There is a vital refinement here: Suyuan trusts that she ought to be effectively submerged in her little girl's life—as any Chinese mother would. June isolates herself from her mom—as American instead of Chinese—and is humiliated by her mom's endeavors to make her fruitful in America—for Suyuan does not comprehend the qualification in the U.S. of unobtrusively advancing one's kid: she goes about it more like wheeling and dealing over the cost of fish available……………Quotes…….(My mother believed you could be anything you wanted to be in America. You could open a restaurant. You could work for the government and get good retirement. You could become rich. You could become instantly
...made for, she no longer offers much imagery to the reader. The story comes to an end as the mother reminds Dee that she was once offered the quilts and refused them because she thought they were "old fashioned and out of style" (880). She also turns the table on Dee by snatching the quilts out of Dee's hands and dumping them into Maggie's lap. She tells Dee to get a couple of the other quilts, and with that said, Dee storms out.
... attempts to change the way Mama and Maggie perceive tradition by using the quilts as a wall display. Mama refuses to allow it, Dee was offered the quilts when she was in college and didn’t want them at that time. Mama gives the quilts to Maggie as her wedding gift to be used every day as they were intended, knowing how much Maggie appreciates them. I agree with Mama and Maggie for keeping family memories and objects in daily use. It is important to maintain your family history in your everyday life to preserve those special memories.
...nderstand each other’s view or just each other. Dee especially believes that these quilts are a representation of what has been discarded as trash just as her culture has, however what she doesn’t see is she was the first to disregard them just as she did her family.
The quilts were pieced together by Mama, Grandma Dee, and Big Dee symbolizing a long line of relatives. The quilts made from scraps of dresses worn by Grandma Dee, Grandpa Jarrell’s Paisley shirts, and Great Grandpa Ezra’s Civil War uniform represented the family heritage and values, and had been promised to Mama to Maggie when she married. However, Dee does not understand the love put into the making of the quilts, neither does she understand the significance of the quilts as part of her family heritage. It is evident she does not understand the significance of the quilt, having been offered one when went away to college declaring them “as old-fashioned” and “out of style”. She does not care about the value of the quilts to her family, rather she sees it as a work of art, valuable as an African heritage but not as a family heirloom. She wants the quilts because they are handmade, not stitched with around the borders. She tells Mama, “Maggie can’t appreciate these quilts!... She’d probably be backward enough to put them to everyday use… But, they’re priceless!.. Maggie would put them on her the bed and in five years they’d be in rags. Less than that!” (317). The quilt signifies the family pride and history, which is important to Mama. She makes the decision to give the quilt to Maggie who will appreciate it more than Dee, to whom she says, “God knows I been saving ‘em for long enough with
The main objects of topic throughout the story are the quilts that symbolize the African American Woman’s history. Susan Farrell, a critic of many short stories, describes the everyday lives of African American Women by saying “weaving and sewing has often been mandatory labor, women have historically endowed their work with special meanings and significance” and have now embraced this as a part of their culture. The two quilts that Dee wanted “had been pieced together by Grandma Dee and then Big Dee and me [Mother] had hung them on the quilt frames on the front porch and quilted them” (par. 55) showing that these quilts were more valuable as memories than they were just blankets. The fabrics in the quilts “were scraps of dresses Grandma Dee had worn fifty and more years ago. Bits and pieces of Grandpa Jarrell’s paisley shirts. And one teeny faded blue piece, about the piece of a penny matchbox, that was from Great Grandpa Ezra’s uniform that he wore in the Civil War” (par. 55) putting forth more evidence that these are not just scraps, but have become pieces of family history. The q...
Dee tries to convince her mother that Maggie should not be given the quilts because Maggie would "probably be backward enough to put them to everyday use" ( Walker 388) and wear them out. Momma comes back with a hope that Maggie does use them since the quilts have been stored in t...
Meanwhile, Dee finds this absurd. She thinks they are too valuable and priceless to be used as everyday necessities. Instead she will hang them. These two ideas of how to use the quilts are in complete contrast to one another. Mama finds them practical, Dee finds them fashionable....
Our mothers have played very valuable roles in making us who we are and what we have become of ourselves. They have been the shoulder we can lean on when there is no one else to turn to. They have been the ones we can count on when there is no one else. They have been the ones who love us for who we are and forgive us when no one else wouldn’t. In Amy Tan’s “Two Kinds,” the character Jing-mei experiences being raised by a mother who has overwhelming expectations for her daughter, which causes Jing-mei to struggle with who she wants to be.
The objects that lead to the final confrontation between Dee and Mama are the old quilts. These quilts are described as being made from old material by family members, which enhances their value to Mama, and the detail with which they are described increases the sense of setting.
Dee, the older sister, wants to hang the quilts on a wall and view her culture from a distance. In fact she even seems ashamed of her family situation. In a letter to her mother Dee says, " . . . no matter where [they] choose to live, she will manage to come and see [them], but she will never bring her friends" (87). She even goes as far as to denounce her name because she claims, " I couldn't bear it any longer being named after the people that oppress me" (89). However, her mother states that she was named after her aunt and grandmother, the very people who made her beloved quilts. She makes it apparent that her idea of appreciating her culture is to leave it alone, especially when she says, " Maggie can't appreciate these quilts! She'd probably be backward enough to put them to everyday use"(91).
In the short story, "Two Kinds" by Amy Tan, a Chinese mother and daughter are at odds with each other. The mother pushes her daughter to become a prodigy, while the daughter (like most children with immigrant parents) seeks to find herself in a world that demands her Americanization. This is the theme of the story, conflicting values. In a society that values individuality, the daughter sought to be an individual, while her mother demanded she do what was suggested. This is a conflict within itself. The daughter must deal with an internal and external conflict. Internally, she struggles to find herself. Externally, she struggles with the burden of failing to meet her mother’s expectations. Being a first-generation Asian American, I have faced the same issues that the daughter has been through in the story.
Quilts symbolize a family’s heritage. Maggie adheres the tradition by learning how to quilt from her grandmother and by sewing her own quilts. Maggie also puts her grandmother’s quilts into everyday use. Therefore, when Dee covets the family’s heirloom, wanting to take her grandmother’s hand-stitched quilts away for decoration, Mama gives the quilts to Maggie. Mama believes that Maggie will continually engage with and build upon the family’s history by using the quilts daily rather than distance herself from
As the story unfolds, Tan suggests that the piano symbolizes different things. For Ni Kan, it is the unwanted pressure her mother inflicts upon. She argues, “Why don’t you like me the way I am? I’m not a genius! I can’t play the piano” (751). However, her mother sees it as a way for her daughter to become the best. Ultimately, the young girl decides to rebel against her mother’s wishes. During her piano lessons with Mr. Chong, her piano teacher, she learns easy ways to get out of practicing. Ni Kan discovers “that Old Chong’s eyes were too slow to keep up with the wrong notes [she] was playing” (751). As a result, Ni Kan performs miserably in a talent show where her parents and friends from the Joy Luck Club attend. Feeling the disapproval and shame from her mother, she decides to stop practicing the piano.
The short story "Everyday Use", written by Alice Walker, heritage is an obvious theme. The story explores contrasting views of Maggie, Dee, and their mother on what they perceive to be heritage, and the quilts shed light on this matter. The quilts were made of scraps of family members' wardrobes and were supposed to be given to Maggie, the youngest daughter, when she got married. Maggie knew how to sew and appreciated personally and emotionally how much time and effort were put into the quilts. For Maggie and her mother, the quilts represented a tradition of significant things that came out of African American struggles during slavery and the Jim Crow era.
Conflict is one of the big literary devices that most authors use today. The short-stories “Everyday Use,” written by Alice Walker in 1973 and “Two Kinds,” written by Amy Tan in 1989 are good examples of how conflict is expressed through literature. In both stories the main characters have opposing opinions on a common ideal. In “Everyday Use” the conflict deals with educated versus uneducated. In “Two Kinds” the conflict deals with what a mother wants for her daughter and what a daughter wants for herself.