“Two Kinds” by Amy Tan, is a short story about a young Chinese girl, known as “Jing-Mei”. The story begins with Jing-Mei telling us about her mother. Her mother came to San Francisco in 1949 after losing everything in China, including her parents, home, first husband, and two twin baby girls. Mrs. Woo believed you could be anything you wanted to be in America. She wanted to create Jing-Mei into a great American prodigy. The next Chinese Shirley Temple. After trying and failing at several things like knowing random capitals to predicting temperatures from all around the world. Jing-Mei decided she didn’t want to be the prodigy her mother wanted her to be. She promised she wasn’t going to let her mother change her into something she was not. …show more content…
One day, while watching the Ed Sullivian Show on TV her mother saw a young Chinese girl that resembled Jing-Mei playing the piano. Jing-Mei saw the look in her mother’s face and realized this would be her mother’s next idea. Hoping that it wouldn’t go through since they didn’t have the money to buy a piano never less piano lessons. Days later however Jing-Mei’s mother notifies her that she hired Mr. Chong a retired piano teacher, to teach Jing-Mei lessons in exchange for house cleaning services. Jing-Mei attends the lessons despite the fact that she doesn’t want to play but soon realized Mr. Chong is deaf, and she can get away with being lazy since he cannot tell if she is playing right or wrong. Mr. Chong and Jing-Mei’s mother sign her up for a talent show performance thinking she is ready. Unfortunately, since Jing-Mei hasn’t been putting a lot of effort she has not yet learned how to play well. She does terrible and thinks her mother will be furious and let her give up. Her mother does not say anything, and a few days later wants her to practice playing. This is when the story reaches its climax point. Jing-Mei tells her mother she doesn’t want to play anymore. She feels like her mother wants her to be something she’s not. Jing-Mei’s mother then tells her there are only two kinds of daughters- obedient ones and ones who have their own mind, and only obedient ones can live in her house. Jing-Mei explodes, telling her mother that then she wishes she wasn’t her daughter, and that she wasn’t her mother. Which her mother replies, it’s too late to change. Jing-Mei then says she wishes she were dead like the twin baby girls her mother lost in China. This hits Jing-Mei’s mother so hard that she stops arguing and just walks away. Jing-Mei feels like she continually disappointed her mother. Her mother came to her on her thirtieth birthday and offered to give her the piano. This made Jing-Mei feel like it was a sign of forgiveness for what had happened many years before, and made her realize her mother always believed in her. After Jing-Mei’s mother dies, she returns to the piano and finds the song she played that day at the talent show. She finds a second part to the song, and realizes “they were two halves of the same song” just like her mother and her. It’s at that moment that Jing-Mei really appreciates everything her mother was trying to do. The story revels that there are two kinds of people, in this case mother and daughter. They are disconnected and different, but when you look at the whole picture they two people can be very similar. “Two Kinds” is written in a first person point of view. We see this in the first paragraph when Jing-Mei introduces us to her mother. The whole story Jing-Mei uses I, indicating this is in her perceptive, “my mother told me when I was nine.” (Tan) The first person point of view is very appropriate for the story because it helps the reader understand by Jing-Mei is so frustrated with her mother. It shows that Jing-Mei feels like her mother wants her to be something Jing-Mei doesn’t think she is capable of being. Although, first person if effective in the story since it is a narrative about the author’s life, it would also be affective to see the mother’s perspective to understand why she expects so much of Jing-Mei. There are two main characters in the story.
The protagonist, Jing-Mei who is the person telling the story isn’t mentioned a lot from a different perspective only when being talked about by the mother and aunt when comparing Jing-Mei and her cousin, “our problem worser than yours. If we ask Jing-Mei was dish, she hear nothing but music. It’s like you can’t stop this natural talent.” (Tan) We usually just hear about Jing-Mei when she is referring to herself. Jing-Mei is also known as a dynamic character. She has her epiphany when her mother dies and she realizes she never really saw her mother point of view or why she wanted her to be successful until she plays the song from the rehearsal, “And after I had played them both a few times. I realized they were two halves of the same song.” (Tan) The antagonist would be the mother. The mother believed “you could be anything you wanted to be in America.” (Tan) She doesn’t change her mind throughout the whole story she always believes Jing-Mei can be anything if she just tired hard enough, and you see this when she says, “Not the best. Because you not trying.” (Tan) The characteristics of the main characters support the central idea that there are two kinds of …show more content…
people. The internal conflict in Jing-Mei is seen all throughout the story.
From the beginning when she went to go get her hair cut, Jing-Mei felt like maybe she could be this prodigy her mother wanted her to be but over time you see her internal conflict grows. She feels like this isn’t true anymore you see this when she says, “If you don’t hurry up and get me out of here, I’m disappearing for good.” (Tan) Through the process Jing-Mei realized the task presented to her where not what she wanted to do and that is when she started to revel and finally exploded. Which lead to her external conflict with her mother when we tells her that, “I wish I’d never been born! I wish I were dead! Like
them.” In conclusion, the author gives great examples of their being two kinds of people. Jing-Mei’s mother being the type of person who believes that if you try hard enough you can do anything you want even if you don’t like it. Jing-Mei however, believes you need to love something to be able to be good at it. In the end Jing-Mei see her mother’s side.
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
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.
The protagonist of the story is Jing-mei. She is a flat character who turns out to be dynamic. Throughout her life, she has been very stubborn about accepting her identity. An example of this is when she explains, "I was 15 and had a vigorously denied that I had any Chinese whatsoever under my skin" (857). She shows her dynamic characteristic at the end of the story when she finally does accept her heritage.
...r mothers death to meet her half sisters. While in China Jing-mei finds out that she did appreciate her mother although she was worried that she didn't and knew nothing about her. She also realizes that she did not have to prove her Chinese identity to her two half sisters, that she belongs to their family automatically because of Suyuan. After her trip to China she "found" her mother and stops feeling doubt of her and Suyuan's relationship with each other.
The narrator in Two Kinds is the daughter of a Chinese immigrant. Her mother believed that anybody in America could be a star. She believed that her
Jing-Mei was forced to take piano lessons; this only further upset her as she felt that she was a constant disappointment. Her mother was mad at her on a regular basis because Jing-Mei stood up for herself and explained to her that she didn’t want to be a child prodigy.
Jing-mei and her mother have conflicting values of how Jing-mei should live her life. She tries to see what becoming a prodigy would be like from her mother's point of view and the perks that it would bring her as she states in the story "In all my imaginings, I was filled with a sense that I would soon become perfect. My mother and f...
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.
In her short story "Two Kinds," Amy Tan utilizes the daughter's point of view to share a mother's attempts to control her daughter's hopes and dreams, providing a further understanding of how their relationship sours. The daughter has grown into a young woman and is telling the story of her coming of age in a family that had emigrated from China. In particular, she tells that her mother's attempted parental guidance was dominated by foolish hopes and dreams. This double perspective allows both the naivety of a young girl trying to identify herself and the hindsight and judgment of a mature woman.
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.
When she arrives, she feels somehow proud to be Chinese. But her main reason why she went back home is to reflect her mother past life on her present life. Through the setting and her relatives, Jing Mei learns the nature of Chinese American culture. The main setting takes place in China, effects of the main character’s point of view through changing her sense of culture and identity. The time period plays a large role on the story, there is disconnect between the mother and daughter who came from different culture. In “A Pair of Tickets”, we learn it’s a first person narrator, we also learn detail of what the narrator is thinking about, detail of her past and how life compared to China and the US are very different. The theme is associated with the motherland and also has to deal with her mother’s death and half sisters. Her imagination of her sister transforming into adult, she also expected them to dresses and talk different. She also saw herself transforming, the DNA of Chinese running through her blood. In her own mind, from a distance she thinks Shanghai, the city of China looks like a major American city. Amy Tan used positive imagery of consumerism to drive home her themes of culture and identity, discovering her ancestral
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.
The theme seems to be about how the expectations of a parent can lead to resentment from the child when the child fails to meet those expectations. The theme is partially set in the opening paragraph with the statement, "My mother believed you could be anything you wanted to be in America" (Tan 1), and again in the second paragraph, when the mother tells the daughter, "Of course you can be prodigy, too" (Tan1). Throughout the story, the mother constantly insists on making of Jing Mei a child prodigy. In the beginning, Jing Mei is excited about the possibility. She even likens herself to Jesus saying, "I was like the Christ child lifted out of the straw manger, crying with holy indignity" (Tan 1). When Jing Mei realizes she isn’t succeeding, she loses hope and so chooses not to succeed. In this she resents her mother for constantly trying to make of her something she is not.
Also, Jing Mei fears that her mother will not love her for who she is unless she is able to succeed in America. Towards the end of the story the daughter got fed up with the mother because she is tired of doing everything the mother
In Amy Tan 's Two Kinds, Jing-mei and her mother show how through generations a relationship of understanding can be lost when traditions, dreams, and pride do not take into account individuality. By applying the concepts of Virginia Woolf, Elaine Showalter, and the three stages of feminism, one can analyze the discourse Tan uses in the story and its connection to basic feminist principles.