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From the beginning of time, mothers and daughters have had their conflicts, tested each other’s patience, and eventually resolved their conflicts. In the story “Two Kinds,” written by Amy Tan, Jing-Mei and her mother are the typical mother-daughter duo that have their fair share of trials. Jing-Mei is an American Chinese Girl who struggles to please her mother by trying to be the “Prodigy” that her mother wishes for. Her mother has great ideas to make her daughter famous with hopes that she would become the best at everything she did. Throughout the story, the mother and daughter display distinct characteristics giving the reader insight of who they are, how they each handle conflict, and helps define how their relationship changes over time. …show more content…
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 …show more content…
An example of this is when Jing-Mei is so exhausted from the nightly testing that when she looks in the mirror she sees herself as a “sad, ugly girl”. At this juncture in the story the daughter first expresses her feelings of defeat and gives up. The mother however, continues to search for the talent that will make her daughter famous and successful. The talent show is the turning point when the mother’s character changes. She is withdrawn and quiet for a couple of days while she inwardly sorts out the disappointment she feels in her daughter. The daughter’s resentment continues to fester and is manifested in a heated argument of which results in the daughter saying some hurtful things to her mother. This event changes the mother’s character drastically in that she basically gives up on her daughter. Years later, on the daughter’s thirtieth birthday, the mother’s character develops to the point that she is able to forgive her daughter and gives her the piano. The gift represents forgiveness and acceptance by her mother for just being who she is. The mother’s belief that her daughter had great potential was unwavering even after years of watching her daughter settle for
The turning point in the story occurs when Jing-mei finally refuses to do what her mother wants and accepts that she will never be a genius. Her "true self finally emerged, and this was what had been inside her all along.."
A Pair of Tickets”, by Amy Tan, is a brief narrative about the conscience and reminiscence of a young Chinese American woman, Jing-Mei, who is on a trip to China to meet her two half-sisters for the first time in her life. Amy Tan is an author who uses the theme of Chinese-American life, converging primarily on mother-daughter relationships, where the mother is an emigrant from China and the daughter is fully Americanized --yellow on the surface and white underneath. In this story, the mother tries to communicate rich Chinese history and legacy to her daughter, but she is completely ignorant of their heritage. At the opening of the story "A Pair of Tickets" Jandale Woo and her father are on a train, the are destined for China. Their first stop will be Guangzhou, China where father will reunite with his long lost aunt. After visiting with her for a day they plan to take a plane to Shanghai, China where Jandale meets her two half-sisters for the first time. It is both a joyful time and yet a time of contrition, Jandale has come to China to find her Chinese roots that her mother told ...
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...
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
The American daughters, on the other hand, the other half of the inseparable pair, tell stories of how their mothers tradition, culture, and beliefs, helped them come to many realizations about themselves. These realizations are both positive and negative. Jing-Mei Woo tells the story of how her mother wanted her to be the next Shirley Temple. "My mother believed you could be anything you wanted to be in America. You could open a restaurant...You could become instantly famous.
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.
The next event in Jing-Mei’s life is when she had to play the piano in a talent show. The piece of music that was chosen for her was called “Pleading Child” (Tan 230). As always she does not want to play and fights it in her own way by playing the left page over and over again.
Amy Tan’s story “Two Kinds” is a story about a mother and her daughter's who had a complicated relationship. And the relationship deteriorated as the mother pushes her daughter to become better at everything. At the beginning of the story, Amy gives us the impression that the mother wants her daughter to become more productive and flourish in the society. To some degree, she wants her to exceed all her expectations because she did not have the chance that her daughter has today. The mother was born and raised in China, where she had lost her mother's, her father, her first husband and her twin’s babies. It can be said the loss and tragedy no longer affect her and she is only focused from now on her present life and the future headed by
The struggle of self identity as she realized that all this while, her mother was right. Once you are born Chinese, you cannot help but feel and think Chinese. Amy Tan’s “A Pair of Tickets” presents an incredibly interesting perspective of a woman named Jing mei who is traveling through her native country of china, embarks on this journey of self-discovery to find her true chinese roots. The opening scene of "A Pair of Tickets" is an appropriate setting for Jing mei remark of becoming Chinese, because the introduction grabs the audience attention. We are first starting out in the story as reading Jing mei turning from American to Chinese in an instant second of the moving of a train from one city to the next. The narrator
society conflict in “The Lesson,” The children are unaware of the prejudices they face, and Miss. Moore exposes them to a life of luxury that is the complete opposite of their rough, poverty ridden neighborhood. The encouragement from Miss. Moore gives the children confidence and hope to move up in the world, but to also be proud of who they are and where they came from. The resolution from this conflict comes from when the children understand that Miss. Moore is an ally to them, and they finally understand the lesson behind her actions. However, in “Two Kinds,” there is a person vs. self-conflict. Jing Mei feels like she is not good enough and cannot meet her mother’s standards. This shows that Jing Mei has a lot of hatred towards her mother, but her mother seems to only want what is best for Jing Mei. However, they cannot seem to agree on something that pleases the both of them. Jing Mei’s mother doesn’t realize how much pressure she is putting on her daughter by trying to live out her ambitions through her only remaining child, which is extremely upsetting to Jing
In the short story “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan, the protagonist and narrator Jing-Mei comes to the realization that sometimes, expectations do not match reality, and when that happens, the emotional impact can be devastating. The conflict in the story is that Jing-Mei’s mother wants her to become a child prodigy, but this is not what Jing-Mei wants for herself. Nevertheless, the mother continuously pushes her to become a prodigy: a child actress like Shirley Temple, a trivia genius, and finally, a pianist. Jing-Mei admits that she could have tried at piano lessons and became a good pianist, but her mother had pushed her to the point where she had lost the will to try. Eventually, the narrator does poorly at a piano recital, and mother and daughter
“Two Kinds” takes place in San Francisco during the 1950’s when a large immigration movement was taking place. Tan begins the story by taking the role of the innocent child that all readers can relate with. You can see a mental picture of Tan’s mother poking and repeating the Chinese words “Ni-Kan, You Watch!” We immediately feel attached and sorry for Tan, being the daughter of an unruly mother. Tan wrote what many of us felt growing up with overbearing parents who expected the world out of us, when we just wanted to go outside and play with the other kids. In a sense we were mentally attached with Tan as she is compared to child actors who she cannot possible compete with. Tan feels as though her mother doesn’t take her own opinions and worries to heart, rather she feels her mother is only concerned about Tan becoming famous so that her mother will be better off. These strong emotions that we feel from Tan also spark something inside most readers to immediately jump on the side of Tan rather than see past these disguised attempts of motivation. Later on in “Two Kinds” Tan’s mother comments on her rugged hair, saying that she “look like Negro-Chinese.” Tan’s emotions come out as she says to herself “as if I did this on purpose.” This small line in the story makes a large impact as we can see in our minds a mother dragging her child into the bathroom washing her hair out and yelling at her for something that the child could not control. In a sense, Tan is almost pulling out our se...
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 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.
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.