The Imporance of the Setting in A Pair of Tickets by Amy Tan

A Pair of Tickets

Since the earliest days of writing and storytelling, Setting has been an imperative part of the storytelling process. Setting is one of many ways a writer can show emotion as well as a plethora of other emotions or experiences in a story. Amy Tan, the author of “A Pair of Tickets”, uses setting to create the feelings being in a mysterious land and being at home at the same time. Setting creates a greater understanding of the struggles that the characters have/are going through during the story. In “A Pair of Tickets,” setting creates the following introspective elements for the characters: a greater understanding to each characters wisdom, reveals the struggles of each characters and shows each characters true age.

The setting of the story creates a better grasp on the intelligence of each character. The narrator of the story goes from her belief that there is no way she is Chinese to understanding her heritage and that she is really Chinese. The narrator states that she doesn’t really know what it means to be Chinese (Tan 133). She progressively learns throughout the story what it means to be Chinese. She mentions of Aiyi and her father knowing Mandarin only while the rest of Aiyi’s family only knows Cantonese (Tan 137). This relates to setting due to the time and areas that Mandarin was spoken compared to where Cantonese is spoken now. The narrator was shocked to see the elegance of the hotel they were scheduled to stay in and the pricing (Tan 138). This can be interpreted as her being inexperienced while the rest of her family were either used to this kind of service or had no outstanding opinions upon it. The narrator starts to see her father in a different manner once he and Aiyi start conversing and onc...

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...found experiences and feelings that the reader can somewhat relate to. The narrator was changed from only seeing herself as an American and only seeing herself and her mother’s daughter to being Chinese and being a part of her mother. Setting can create: a better understanding of the characters experiences, the challenges they’ve had to work through, and the longevity of their being. Without the proper use of setting one can only assume that any story could be only dialogue followed by the feeling of being stuck in a blank room with nothing more than the characters. Therefore, setting should never be overlooked or thought as less equal to any other storytelling element.

Work Cited

Tan, Amy. “A Pair of Tickets”. Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing.

Eds. X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. New York: Longman, 2010: 132-145. Print.