The relationship between children and their parents develops a central idea of meeting expectations and extreme pressures through conflict and cultral setting. “The Rules of the Game” and “ Two Kinds”, are perspectives from The Joy Luck Club written by Amy Tan. Both feature Asian-American women and their realtionship with their daughters. In “The Rules of the Game”, Waverly and her mother had an argument. Waverly felt that her mother used her suceesses to brag to others and Waverly gets annoyed and ran away. As Waverly returned home, she states “…I could see two yellow lights shining from our flat like two tiger’s eyes in the night.” The lights, symbolizes the warmth of her home. It compares to a tiger’s eyes to illustrate the belligerence …show more content…
Jing-Mei gets frustrated because she could not satisfy her mother. After Jing-mei sees her “mother's disappointed face once again”, something inside her begins to die. She begins to rebel and now she sees the “prodigy” in her as the cause of the rebellion. “In the years that followed, I failed her so many times, each time asserting my own will, … for unlike my mother, I did not believe I could be anything I wanted to be, I could only be me.” Jing- mei expressed her anger by going against her mother's expectations which started from her childhood experiences. In “Two Kinds”, Jing-mei’s mother wants Jing-mei to become an musical prodigy by playing the piano. To some extent, Jing-mei’s mother adopts a scant amount of American values. She constantly tells Jing-mei a typical American belief, that one can be “… anything you wanted to be in America.” However, to an even towering extent, Jing-mei’s mother’s values and ways of doing things areentirely Chinese. Just like the majority of Chinese mothers, she tries to form Jing-mei into a “proper Chinese girl”, who obeys whatever the mother says. “Only two kinds of daughters,” she shouted in
Since "You could be anything you wanted to be in America" (Tan 348) Jing-Meis' mother thought that meant that you had to be a prodigy. While that makes "Everything [sound] too simple and too easily achieved; [Jing-Mei] does not paint a picture of her mother as ignorant or silly" (Brent). In fact, in the beginning, Jing-Mei and her mother are both trying to "Pick the right kind of prodigy" (Tan 349). "In the beginning, [she] was just as excited as [her] mother,"(Tan 349) she wanted to be a prodigy, she wanted to "become perfect [she wanted her] mother and father to adore [her]"(Tan 349). As she strived to achieve perfection she and her mother would try many different things to try and find the "right kind of prodigy" (Tan 349).
Jing-mei 's mother wants Jing-mei to be a prodigy and get popular. Thus, the mother rents a piano for Jing-mei to help her achieve this. Many years later, Jing-mei finds the piano in a broken state, so she decides to have it repaired. She starts playing the song she used to play, “Pleading Child.” But to the right of “Pleading Child,” she finds a second song named “Perfectly Contented.” She starts to play both songs, “And after I [Jing-mei] had played them both a few times, I realized they were two halves of the same song.” (6) Jing-mei’s mother tells Jing-mei that there are two kinds of people: the respectful kind and the disrespectful kind. At that time, Jing-mei also finds out that there are two kinds of people inside her. She could choose to be the kind where the person is a prodigy and respectful, or be the kind that is ugly in the eyes of people. When she plays “Pleading Child” and “Perfectly Contented,” Jing-mei realizes that her identity had changed completely because of her laziness and beliefs. Jing-mei learns that there are two kinds of people in the world, and she should choose the right
Woo cleans the house herself and no longer has a housekeeper. With the money she saved, she hired Mr. Chong, an ancient piano teacher, who can barely hear and whose eyes are too dulled to tell when Jing-mei messes up. He is so genuine that Jing-mei feels guilty and picks up the basic skills, but she is so bent on not pleasing her mother that she continues to purposefully lack in her efforts. She hates the piano. She hates the fact that her mother is shaping her identity. She hates that her mother forces it upon her. She hates that it's everything she isn’t: disciplined, elegant, and most of all controlled. Jing-mei wants to be who she wants to be, and with the piano around, she only continues to be who her mother wants her to be, but she can not tell her mother this. She is supposed to play a piece called “Pleading Child” which is a “simple, moody piece that sounded more difficult than it was”. Even though she had not practiced and didn't know the piece, she played anyway. Halfway through, she began to realize how awful she was. The silence that followed her performance and her parent’s disappointed looks unfolded the undeniable truth, Jing-mei was not a piano
Amy Tan’s novel, The Joy Luck Club describes the lives of first and second generation Chinese families, particularly mothers and daughters. Surprisingly The Joy Luck Club and, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts are very similar. They both talk of mothers and daughters in these books and try to find themselves culturally. Among the barriers that must be overcome are those of language, beliefs and customs.
Jing-mei finds her cultural identity when she becomes and adult. One half of her wants to be that perfect, obedient child that her mother wants. The other half wants to have attention from her mother. She is that “Pleading Child” and “Perfectly Contented” daughter. Although Jing-mei and her mother’s culture clashed, she was able to find who she really
The two pieces of textual evidence I have to support this claim are both from paragraph #67 in the reading. The first one is whenever Jing-mei and her mother get into an argument about not wanting to play piano anymore. Jing-mei's mother shouts “Only two kinds of daughters!” and then she goes on to say “Those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind!” These two pieces of evidence from the text are crucial to the story as a whole. They are important because Jing-mei’s mother wants Jing-mei to follow the chinese culture, and play instruments, and to be a talented young girl like the ones on T.V. While Jing-mei’s mom wants her to follow the chinese culture, Jing-mei is growing up in america, and wants to follow her own mind, and she wants to do her own thing. This causes big conflict between the two during the story. So her mom does kinda force culture onto Jing-mei and that’s where culture is noticed, but Jing-mei also has personal experiences at school that make her want to express her own thoughts and be herself and do what she wants to do, making her not listen to her mom that
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...
In the beginning, Jing-mei, is “just as excited as my mother,”(469). Jing-mei was eagerly hoping to make her mother proud. However, her mother’s obsession with becoming a prodigy discouraged Jing-mei. The daily test began to aggravated Jing-mei because they made her feel less sma...
Jing-Mei tries to live up to her mother’s expectations but feels that her mother expects more from her than she can deliver. She doesn’t understand why her mother is always trying to change her and won’t accept her for who she is. She feels pressure from her family when she is compared to her cousin Waverly and all her accomplishments. Soon the conflict grows to resentment as her mother tests her daily on academics, eventually causing Jing-Mei to give up while her mother struggles to get her attention and cooperation. Her mother avoids arguing with her daughter early in the story, continuing to encourage her to strive for fame. Her mother’s next assignment for her daughter is piano lessons. This goes along pretty well until her mother forces her to participate in a talent show. The daughter’s failure on her performance at the talent show causes embarrassment to her mother. Conflict is evident when two days later, after the talent show, she reminds her daughter that it’s time for piano practice and the daughter refuses to obey her mother. The conflict that the daughter feels boils over in an outburst of anger and resentment towards her mother for trying to make her something that she is not. Harsh words are spoken causing the mother to retreat and not speak of this event ever
The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan is a piece of literature that displays the power of femininity. Through the past couple of centuries the role that women play in society has drastically changed. Women in various societies have experienced turmoil due to being discriminated against and looked down upon often. Women were viewed upon as being the house caregiver and leaving majority of the other jobs in society to men. Women have moved up the social ladder, politics, jobs, and in households. Femininity is shown throughout The Joy Luck Club. These women each have their own life experiences and stories but through it all they remained strong. Rules and regulations for women in China were very restrictive. Women had to live up to the ideal model of being obedient, hard working, bearing children, hide her unhappiness, and to not complain about anything. In China the women had little worth and were only seen as valuable to their immediate family members. Most of the mothers left China for the reason of improving their daughter’s lives in America. The novel demonstrates various characteristics of how women are represented. The theme of women is demonstrated through the hardships experienced, ethics and self-worth.
Some people say that the love between a mother and her daughter is forever; but what about the understanding? In the case of Waverly Jong and her mother in the story “Rules of the Game,” by Amy Tan, there is much miscommunication and misunderstanding. The story is set in mid-1950’s Chinatown and as the story opens, it is Christmas time. “Rules of the Game” is the telling of how a little girl learns to be more independent but falls into conflict with her mother along the way and becomes a type of trophy. Amy Tan uses elements such as character, symbolism, and setting to portray the themes of struggle between two cultures and independence perfectly in “Rules of the Game.”
...ith Jing Mei and her mother, it is compounded by the fact that there are dual nationalities involved as well. Not only did the mother’s good intentions bring about failure and disappointment from Jing Mei, but rooted in her mother’s culture was the belief that children are to be obedient and give respect to their elders. "Only two kinds of daughters.....those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind!" (Tan1) is the comment made by her mother when Jing Mei refuses to continue with piano lessons. In the end, this story shows that not only is the mother-daughter relationship intricately complex but is made even more so with cultural and generational differences added to the mix.
Lindo knows that Waverly will never be Chinese. She saw how American Waverly is when she went to school. Since Waverly was born in America, she went to school where they taught western things. Even though Waverly may look Chinese, she does not act like one. Lindo knows that if Waverly goes to China, she won’t have to worry about looking like a local because she doesn’t act Chinese at all. I feel like that Lindo knows what is going to happen to her daughter when she goes to school. Once she goes to school, Waverly is going to forget about all the Chinese that she learned.