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Culture influences and ideas
Analyzing characters from amy tans two kinds essay
Culture influences and ideas
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Isaac Cassie Tre
What if I told you that your culture does not affect how you will see the world. Some people will tell you that culture plays the biggest role in how you live. If your culture plays a big role, then you would be able to notice it on a wider scale, but you don’t see it very visible in many people.
Your family does not change your point of view and perspective on how you see the world and others. This is shown in the story “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan. She points out many aspects of this in the story about her childhood. Amy made this story explaining her childhood and all the events that happened in it; she learned from the experiences and changed as a person as well. Amy’s mother wanted her to be a Chinese Shirley Temple. Her mom had many big hopes that Amy would be who she wanted her to be. Although, Amy wanted to be her own person. She didn't want to follow in the footsteps of other known people. This proves the point that family does not change your point of view on the world. Even though Amy's mom was stuck on the idea of being someone else, Amy stuck to her thoughts. Therefore, Amy didn't allow family to change how she viewed others and the world.
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Some of us like Maggie in Everyday Use by Alice Walker have seen a close person change ethnicity (her sister) but decided to not follow and stated true even though she went through such a rough time with her sister. This is a great example of how it doesn't change your view because people think that since you went through one little incident your view has changed, no that's not what happens it's about how you let that incident affect you is how it changes you or doesn't change you; in this case Maggie didn't follow her sister in her change instead she stayed with her mom and kept living the way they had
In Amy Tan’s short story “Two Kinds”, Tan writes about a mother who is from China and now she lives in America in the 1950’s with her daughter, Jing-mei. The mother sees America as a country of hope and new beginnings and a wants a better life for the family. The mother has high expectations for the daughter and pushes her relentlessly. The daughter struggles with the mother’s hopes and dreams. Those are the mother’s hopes and dreams and not the daughter’s. As young children we want to make our own path and do things against the grain not realizing that the words of our parents hold wisdom that we are to ignorant to understand.
The author demonstrates a personal example of how communication became a barrier because of the way Tan had to assist when her mother would speak. Tan would often have to relay the meaning of her mother’s message, because her mother’s “broken English” was difficult for others to comprehend. When Amy was younger, she remembers having to act as her mother on the phone, so that people on the other end would treat her mother with the respect she deserved. On one occasion, when her mother went to the doctor to get her CAT scan results on a benign brain tumor, her mother claimed that “the hospital did not apologize when they said they had lost the CAT scan and she had come for nothing” (Tan, 544 ). It was not until Tan had talked to the doctor that the medical staff seemed to care about any of her mother’s complications. Tan seems to come to the conclusion that a language barrier affects both sides. Not only does it affect Tan, but it also appears to affect the people around her. For instance, this happens when Tan changes her major from the stereotypical “Asian’s become doctors” to an English teacher. She eventually learns to write fiction and other writings that she was constantly told she would never be successful at.
Our mothers have played very valuable roles in making us who a we are and what we have become of ourselves. They have been the shoulder we can lean on when there was no one else to turn to. They have been the ones we can count on when there was no one else. They have been the ones who love of 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, causes Jing-mei to struggle with who she wants to be. “Only two kind of daughters,” “Those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind!”(476). When a mother pushes her daughter to hard the daughter rebels, but realizes in the end that their mothers only wanted the best for them and had their best interest at heart.
Culture is expressed through a variety of different ways, from clothing styles to lifestyles to faithful traditions. It can also have a deep impact on the viewpoints of those around you, whether negatively or positively. No matter how a person goes about their everyday life, they can rise above the expectations of their culture to change the world around them. Culture does not have to be the basis of every thought, word, or deed of a person.
Family defines people making them who they are. A person's family heritage, how their parents met and married, their parents’ occupations, their siblings, and their early lives play an important role in who they are and who they become. Every family is different and has different characteristics and members, but those differences are what make every family unique. Those differences combined with my family members’ experiences and the stories they have chosen to share are what makes this story exclusive to my family.
For humans, fitting in with the world around us is a necessity. We slowly change ourselves to become more similar to the people we spend the most time with or that have power over us. Sometimes this change is conscious, but many times is happens without us noticing until someone or something comes along and points out how different we are. The way human minds work makes us need other people in our lives; to keep those people around, we must have common beliefs or interests. We tend to change ourselves or attempt to change others until they are more like us. In Flower Garden, by Shirley Jackson, the character of young Mrs. Winning married into the Winning family 11 years prior to the time covered in the story. In those 11 years, she has become more and more like her mother in law. Her identity has been consumed by the Winning family and transformed her into a younger version of the older Mrs. Winning. This loss of identity in the main theme on the story. Shirley Jackson writes about the loss of individualism, the loss of personal identity, and the necessity of conformation with the intent of informing the reader that it is detrimental to society as a whole. This is especially true and can be seen through the author’s point that the people at the top, the ones that are in charge or that are looked up to, do not want to change. Changes could take away their position of power and control, so they set rules and regulations that force people to think and act like them.
If we aren’t understanding of the variances between cultures and the way they communicate verbally, emotionally, and nonverbally this can create considerable issues. The three primary problems that could arise if we don’t have an understanding of cultural differences are the ways we interpret others comments and actions, how we predict future behaviors, and conflicting behaviors of others (“Differences in Culture,” n.d). Culture plays a significant part in peoples lives because it shapes our personal values and views on the world. Having a perspective and understanding a persons culture is important because each culture is different in respect to personal views and behaviors, but it is key to respect their culture because just like us it shaped who they are. The reason we have stereotypes of other cultures is because of this particular reason, we assume that our culture is superior and the correct way to do things. For example, I have heard the stereotype that French people are impolite, offensive, and they hate Americans, but was this stereotype created because of a misunderstanding between cultures? Cultural differences can be educational because it allows us to understand the uniqueness of a culture and allows us to learn new things. Cultural differences allow people to feel a sense of belonging, which can be empowering knowing
Family is really what you make of it. A family can affect someone either positively or negatively. How a person decides to live their life depends on individual goals and perspectives on life. Just because you are born into a family that is rich or poor, nice or mean, etc., does not mean you have to be the same way. Perry, Dick, and Nancy all had different family experience and based off of those experiences they created a life style in which they wanted to live. Just because they shared the same blood as their families, they were able to decide to stick with family or create their own path.
What should a mother teach to her daughter? Obviously, she has a lot of stuff need to teach. In the text “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan, the mother has high expectation to her daughter Jing-mei and tries her best to offer Jing-neither with best education as she can. On the other hand, the text “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid, the mother sets up a bunch of rules in order to teach her daughter. Both mothers plays their role in daughters’ early development and influence their daughters to aware how to achieve success.
An author would find it troublesome to develop a literary piece without adding any literary elements to it because elements of literature are used as stepping-stones to help an unrefined piece of writing bloom into a story that is more polished and complete. Also, if a literary piece is undeveloped it becomes problematic for the author to properly convey what the theme of his or her story is. In “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan, the author uses the literary elements of characterization, setting, and symbolism to enhance the quality of the story and help support the theme of it. The literary element primarily used to help support the story’s theme in “Two Kinds” would be the characters in it, specifically June and her mother. June (the protagonist) constantly finds herself in disagreement with her mother (the antagonist) and begins to rebel, because June does not
According to Webster’s Dictionary, culture is defined as tradition or a way of life. It is also a defining principle in how we live our life and the type of people we become. The Salish Indians of the Montana and Celie, the main character of the book The Color Purple, are two examples of cultures that made them who they are. Celie is a poor, black, woman growing up in Memphis, Tennessee in the mid-twentieth century. The men have constantly put her down, through beatings and rape, for being a woman with no talent at all. Her husband’s lover comes to town and gives Celie a chance to see a culture where a woman can stand up for herself and teaches her that love is possible. The Salish on the other hand have a culture that has gone on through the ages and still is a part of each person today despite the obstacles they have had to face. Culture does shape us because from birth it is what tells us our ideals, laws, and morals that we live by each day.
The story "Two Kinds" by Amy Tan is about a mother and daughter who have strong conflicting ideas about what it means to have a sense of self. This may be partly due to the mother growing up in China, which is a very different culture than the American culture where endless opportunities are available to anyone who wants to pursue them. Jing-mei's mother wants her daughter to be the best, a prodigy of sorts, and to have the kind of life, full of hopes and dreams that she did not have. In the beginning of the story Jing-mei liked the idea of becoming a prodigy however, the prodigy in her became impatient. "If you don't hurry up and get me out of here, I'm disappearing for good." It warned. "And then you'll always be nothing" (500). After disappointing her mother several times Jing-mei started to detest the idea of becoming a prodigy. The idea Jing-mei's mother had for her to become a prodigy was too much pressure for a small child and was something that Jing-mei was clearly not ready to be. As a result the pressure that her mother laid upon her only made Jing-mei rebel against her mother and she resisted in giving her best. Jing-mei did this because she only wanted her mother's love and acceptance for who she was not only what she could become. Furthermore, Jing-mei's point of view of being the kind of person that one can be proud of was very different from her mother's point of view.
The Literary theme that has captivated my interest and has moved me to research and understand the content which it describes or analyze , would be The Ambition of Self improvement. This theme can be related with psychoanalytic criticism. The story that has inspired me to study this theme comes from a short fiction story written by Amy Tan, named “Two Kinds”. This story has primary conflict between mother and daughter, with self improvement being the main theme identified in the text. Conflict that emerges between parents and children are still common factors current in society today. Personal experiences readers have had growing up can ignite an interest for readers to seek understanding of self improvement and the factors of Psychoanalytic criticism that adopt in them.
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.
Despite this ever-presence, there are a lot of questions surrounding culture, like what exactly culture, why are their differences in culture and what arises from those differences, and how culture interacts with society to influence one’s worldview. In this essay, these questions were answered. To summarize, culture, loosely defined, is the set of ideas, traditions, and beliefs that shape an individual’s or a group’s behavior and/or outlook on the world (Warf). Different cultures arose from biological, environmental, and geographic differences between humans back when humans were evolving and thereafter. In those differences, many things, both positive like the sharing of ideas, and negative, like the annihilation of a culture, can occur when two cultures meet. Culture can affect one’s worldview in similar ways. It can cause a sort of broadening of the mind, or it can cause stereotypes and even hate crimes. But, no matter what you think about culture, in this diverse, very global society, it is becoming increasingly important to understand what culture is and what one as a citizen, need to keep in