The Jacket Compare Contrast Essay

External pressures affect everyone constantly throughout their whole lives. Some of these pressures appear more prominently in an individual’s life than others, making them more influential to that individual. Specific factors tend to affect people rather positively and can raise their spirits up to the sky, while others can appear so negatively that they knock someone down like bowling pins. In “Two Kinds” the main character faces the difficulty of being Chinese and her mother’s expectations because of their race. The narrator in “The Jacket” deals with not having enough money and therefore society automatically categorizes him as poor and lower class. Lastly, the protagonist in “The House on Mango Street” overcomes the discrimination with her gender. Race, class, and gender negatively affect the main characters in

“Two Kinds” by Amy Tan, “The Jacket” by Gary Soto, and “The House on Mango Street” by Sandra Cisneros. Thus, these three external pressures cause their negatively impacted self-identities.
The main character, Jing-mei, in “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan, feels negative impacts by her race. During a fight between Jing-mei and her mother, her mother yells at her exclaiming, “‘Only one kind of daughter can live in this house. Obedient daughter!’”(Tan 98). Her mother, belonging to the Chinese race, wants to control exactly how Jing-mei acts, but Jing-mei realizes something: “[She] didn’t have to do what [her] mother says anymore. [She] wasn’t her slave. This wasn’t China”(Tan 97). She finally grasps the fact that she does not have to conform to whatever her mother wants her to do because she has freedom in America. By belonging to the Chinese race, her mother feels that she may demand Jing-mei to do anything and she must obey, but ultimately Jing-mei achieved nothing because she did not have the heart to accomplish anything.
In addition, the narrator of “The Jacket” by Gary Soto feels the negative impacts of social class.

When his mother buys him a new, ugly colored jacket, people at school bully him: “During morning recess Frankie T., the playground terrorist, pushed me to the ground and told me to stay there until recess was over”(Soto 6). Since his mother does not have enough money to buy him a nice looking jacket, at recess, the other kids start to bully him for what he wears to school. He begins to feel that everyone criticizes him constantly, and “The teachers were no help: they looked my way and talked about how foolish I looked in my new jacket. I saw their heads bob with laughter, their hands half covering their mouths”(Soto 6). During those years, he feels as if his ugly jacket caused this mess. He starts to believe that the reason for people’s gossip and laughs originate from him and how ugly his jacket appears. This belief begins all because of how he thinks. This way of thinking causes him to not secure any love, any friendship. Instead he stays lonely and to himself all because he assumes his jacket is the cause for him to not have any type of social

life.
Lastly, Esperanza, the main character of “The House on Mango Street” by Sandra Cisneros, experiences negative impacts from her gender. Esperanza talks about her great-grandmother and says, “She was a horse woman too, born like me in the Chinese year of the horse - which is supposed to be bad luck if you’re born female - but I think this is a Chinese lie because the Chinese, just like the Mexicans, don’t like their women strong”(Cisneros 705). Esperanza, as a female, should not have the qualities of a strong person but rather weak, just the way the Chinese and Mexicans like it. On top of that, Esperanza questions her great-grandmother who “looked out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow. I wonder if she made the best with what she got or was sorry because she couldn’t be all the things she wanted to be” (Cisneros 705). Esperanza's great-grandmother did not achieve much sitting by a window for most of her life wasting her time away because she resisted marrying Esperanza’s great-grandfather. Esperanza wants to oppose this and not lounge by a window her whole life. By being female, people underestimate her to not be strong and that she will follow in her great-grandmother’s steps, but she wants to be different than that.
The protagonists in “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan, “The Jacket” by Gary Soto and “The House on Mango Street” by Sandra Cisneros, endure the negative impacts of their race, class, and gender. Each character faces multiple difficult challenges due to the negative impacts on them. This causes them to fail in some aspect of their life. They had to learn how to withstand the pressure of their race, class and gender. Other pressure affect us every day and every single person has to battle external pressures that block them, creating an obstacle course. How they affect the person depends on the person and whether they take it for the worse or for the better. No matter what, everyone has to withstand external pressures that appear within their everyday lives. Hence they must be prepared and ready to handle them and fight back at them.