How Does Tan Present The Change In A Pair Of Tickets

In Amy Tan’s story, A Pair of Tickets, she uses the change in scenery to show the development of the main character which is “June May” (263) and to show her transformation. Throughout the short story, we see changes in the scenery but we also see changes in the time. The main character is reminiscing on her past which is where we see the shifts of present tense to past tense, which is where we see the change in scenery on the side. The change in scenery seems to be something that is a part of her. She starts the story by making these shifts right away. The description of scenery has a way of relating itself to the main character’s feelings of fear and happiness.

She starts off the in present time: “The minute our train leaves Hong Kong border

and enters Shenzen, China, I feel different” (263). She says that she feels different because she has never been there but it also means that she feels weird because she is starting to feel stuff she has never felt before. She starts off by talking about how she feels in the present but the right after this she shifts to talk about a conversation she was having with her mom: ““Cannot be helped,” my mother said when I was fifteen and had vigorously denied that I had any Chinese whatsoever below my skin” (263). She denied being Chinese but once she enters her mother’s birthplace she starts feeling “different”(263). The change in time from present tense to past tense in the first two paragraphs of the story is one way that Tan uses to show its readers the change that June May undergoes.
As mentioned previously June May talks about how she feels different as soon as she enters Shenzen. Following this paragraph she back flashes to a conversation she had with her mother which reveals to the readers what she means when she says she “feels different”(263) as soon as she enters Shenzen. She talks in past tense for a couple of paragraphs but then she shifts back to present tense to reflect on something her mother told her. This shift to present tense reveals what she means in the beginning of the story when she says she “feels different” (263): “But today I realize I’ve never really known what it means to be Chinese” (264). She is starting to feel more Chinese when she enters Shenzen. Even though she never felt Chinese she said starts feeling it when she arrives here.
She shifts back to talking about the present again which is where she first mentions the scenery in detail: “… all he is seeing out the train window is a sectioned field of yellow, green, and brown, a narrow row canal flanking the tracks, low rising hills, and three people in blue jackets riding an ox-driven cart on this early October morning” (264).

This is the first time in the story in which Tan not only mentions the scenery but also associates it to the characters’ emotions. This quotation compares the yellow and green to the joy of one of the characters. She also includes the month in which the present tense is taking place to signify several things. One of the things that the month of October may be symbolic of is death since this is when fall starts and the leaves start dying. The death of the leaves may be symbolic of the death of June May’s

mother.
October for many people including myself tends to signify the uncertainty of what is to come. I may expect this month to bring certain types of weather but we are never very sure of what it will bring, I assume the worse. Since I tend to assume the worse of October I predict that it will be fairly cold but not as cold as winter but from time to time it surprises us with warm weather. This specific detail of the scenery relates to the fear June May feels of meeting her twin sisters for the first time. Throughout the story she assumes the worse; she feels that her sisters will: “They’ll think I’m responsible, that she died because I didn’t appreciate her” (266). She fears that her sisters will blame her for her mother’s death but that is the complete opposite of what occurs.
Tan gives another type of scenery in this story to reciprocate June May’s transformation which is color.

“The landscape has become gray, filled with low flat cement buildings, old factories” (266), as soon as June May enters “Guangzhou” (266) she starts feeling fear. Fear tends to be associated with dark colors such as gray, and black. “The landscape has become gray” (266) to also show that this is an unknown landscape to June May. She feels as if she does not belong here which is why the landscape has become gray. As mentioned previously, she “denied being Chinese” (263), which means she did not feel Chinese at one point of her life. Since she does feel Chinese, this landscape is unknown to her and she feels as if she does not

belong.
This shows how the landscape has changed with how she is feeling. June May’s feelings start to change; she says she feels “different” (263) as soon as the scenery/ location changes. But that is not the only that changes alongside the scenery, her name goes from being “June May” (263) to being changed into “Jing-mei” (268). Her name has transformed into its Chinese version as she starts feeling more Chinese and as she is spending more time there. Which is how the scenery is changing besides her, she starts changing stuff like feelings and her name for example when she enters China.
The landscape also leads her to discovering things from her mother’s past that she had never known about. This landscape seems to give her father more confidence in telling her unknown things about her mother: “but now he looks like he’s a young boy, so innocent and happy” (264). He too feels different in this new location which is why he starts revealing things from the past. June May’s transformation since she has arrived here has led her to become curious enough to ask things about the past that she has never cared about learning. The telling of her mother’s story changes back to past tense but it is still capable of transforming June May even further. She starts realizing things that she had never realized before. She even feels bad because she now understood so many things about her. This brings her closer to her mother even though she is already dead. She regrets not hearing these stories earlier because she felt as if she never really “knew” (276) much about her. This is her transformation of being that careless girl in her hometown in the United States to the scared woman she is in China.
Throughout her time in China her emotions seem to be gray just as the landscape is. The landscape is “gray outside” (276) because she is still feeling fear of what it will be like the first time she meets her sisters. But this changes as soon as she arrives inside the airport. She seems some familiarity in her sisters: “And then I see her” (276), she sees her mother in her twin sisters. She sees the one person she grew up seeing. The scenery changes: “The gray-green surface changes to the bright colors” (276), it has changed because she no longer feels fear but happiness. She feels happy because they did not reject her as she thought all along instead she arrived to find two versions of her mother ready to receive her. She is able to feel close to her mother once again.