Tasneem Nishat
Sr. Elma
English Language Arts
September 28, 2014
Grandmamma's Magical Hands The Jade Peony by Wayson Choy
Did you ever look at your delicate, fragile, and elegant hands that can create and innovate
so much? This is the way Sek-Lung look at his grandmother's hands. Wayson Choy takes the hands of Sek-Lung's grandmother and turns it into a world of its own specifically as memories after
Sek-Lung's Grandmamma's death . He shows the love and care of a grandmother through her hands by
symbolizing the concepts. Wayson Choy takes his readers on a journey of the love and magic of
Grandmamma's hands.
Choy portrays a vivid image of how Grandmamma's hands look, specifically to her youngest
grandson Sek-Lung.
…show more content…
He thought, "Her palm felt plush and warm, the slender, old fingers
boney and firm, so magically strong was her grip that I could not imagine how she could ever part from
me. Ever." Sek- Lung was so amazed by her hands and that made him realize the connection between
him and his Grandmamma. Sek-Lung also recalls, " Her hands were magical. My most vivid memories
are of her hands: long elegant fingers, with impeccable nails, a skein of fine, barely-seen veins, and
wrinkled skin like light pine." To the narrator, the hands of his Grandmamma were precious and vivid
memories. He also compared the wrinkled skin of his Grandmamma's hands to a light pine which are
very fragile and pastel in color. With such clear use of imagery, the readers have don't have any trouble
picturing Grandmamma's
…show more content…
The windchimes were not just presents but it was
a way for Grandmamma to show her connections and that's how Sek-Lung knew what her hands
innovated were special and unique. The author puts a lot of emphasis on the magic of Grandmamma's
hands. The author writes, " Soon the graceful ritual movements of her hand returned to her, and I
became lost in the magic of her task: she dabbed a cabalistic mixture of glue on one end and skillfully
draped the braided end of a silk thread into it." Sek-Lung thought the motions of Grandmamma's hands
and the way they created things was graceful and magical to him.
The creations of Grandmamma's hands and her hands themselves circulate symbolism in "The
Jade Peony". Grandmamma's hands convey and show so much devotion even though they are delicate
and pull off simple tasks. Sek-Lung states, " But above all, without realizing it then, her hands conveyed
to me the quality of their love." A lot of the love came from and shone from Grandmamma's
In Wayson Choy’s The Jade Peony, a major topic explored is the strict use of gender roles. In the novel, the theme of cultural identity explores how the characters are oppressed by gender roles through cultural tradition. The novel creates a window into the lives of a Chinese-Canadian family, as everyone is trying to find their place in a country that doesn’t accept them and a culture that is never truly theirs, each family member goes through a struggle wherein they have to figure out where they can stand on the side of that dash. Chinese – (or) – Canadian, each side holding its own unique challenges within its “hyphenated reality.” (Philip Gambone (The New York Times)).While they will never be accepted as truly Canadian, their Chinese culture
Tim O’Brien employs the elements Symbolism, Theme, and Author’s Style in his book The Things They Carried.
The texture of her hair was somehow both firm and soft, springy, with the clean, fresh scent of almonds. It was a warm black, and sunlight was caught in each kink and crinkle, so that up close there was a lot of purple and blue. I could feel how, miraculously, each lock wove itself into a flat or rounded pattern shortly after it left her scalp- a machine could not have done it with more precision- so that the “matting” I had assumed was characteristics of dreadlocks could be more accurately be described as “knitting”. (Walker 232)
The united States Declaration of independence states that all men are equal, but aren’t all women as well? Nowadays, the numbers for the population are at an increase for the support in gender equality, with the capture of feminist labels. The seek for equality between men and women, and criticize the privileges that arouse by gender differences. However in Old China, males control almost everything due to a patriarchal society. At that time, not only men, but also women are influenced by male chauvinism. In the Jade Peony, written by Wayson Choy, female characters are affected by an unequal perspective despite their age group.
A Hellenistic masterpiece, she is caught at the very moment in which she alights on the prow of a warship. Right leg outstretched, her hips bend left and her shoulders twist back to the right, creating a beautiful sense of torsion through the contrapposto technique. Her massive wings are blown back by the speed of her flight and the ship, possibly in the moment just before she furls them. Damp from the spray of the sea, her tunic is plastered tightly around her body by the driving wind, held in place with two belts, one around her waist and the other beneath her breasts. A second piece of cloth called a himation has slipped from around her waist and streams out on either side behind her, blown tightly against her thighs. Both garments exhibit virtuoso handling of the drapery—the wet folds of the fine cloth can be felt by the viewer, cool in the misty gusts, and the transitions to where her skin can be seen underneath is flawless.
of memories” (Walker, 254). It is a representation of her mother’s love and warmth. The
“I didn’t think she was ugly, not the way others in our family did. “Ai-ya, seeing her, even a demon would leap out of his skin,” I once heard Mother remark. When I was small, I liked to trace my fingers around Precious Auntie’s mouth. It was a puzzle. Half was bumpy, half was smooth and melted closed. The inside of her right cheek was stiff as leather, the left was moist and soft. Where the gums had burned, the teeth had fallen out. And her tongue was like a parched root…” (Tan 3).
are the creators of these marvelous innovations, and that soon, they will be the ones to lead
The empowerment often dismissed attributes such as emotion and femininity is symbolized by the references to hands throughout the poem. In the poem’s third stanza, Eisenbart attempts to mask his ostentatious disapproval of the ‘humble platform’ he has ‘graced’ by ‘composing’ the pose of ‘Rodin’s Thinker’ so as to exhibit the figure of sophistication. Yet he comes to yield, against his own volition, to the exuberance of this blooming ‘titian’-haired female. Combined with a ‘grin’, she mimics his actions, ‘her hand bent under her chin in mockery of his own’. The speaker and the girl laugh at the expense of the Professor. Later, she ‘summoned by arrogant hands’ the ‘fullness of all passion or despair’. Her character represents the wholesomeness of femininity. Her ‘arrogant hands’ represent an air of assurance in daring to command this music that is normally reserved for ‘masters’, allowing her to transcend supposed qualities of ‘age and power’. The harmony of melody that she produces represents the voice of femininity, speaking for the ‘passion and despair’ felt by the speaker and each of the girls in the room. There is no allocation of a name to this
The novel “The Jade Peony” is narrated by three different characters throughout the story as it progresses. In part one of the book, it is narrated by a character named “Jook Liang” but usually just called Liang while in conversation. The reader is told the setting and time of the plot, which is in Vancouver, BC and in the time of the Great Depression (In the 1930s). We also learn the names of all the members in Liang’s family. An important figure in Liang’s portion of the story is a man named Wong-Suk. Wong-Suk and Liang become great friends, he occasionally tells her tales from the past. While Poh-Poh was helping Liang tie a ribbon for her tap dance shoes, we learn about her childhood. Poh-Poh was considered disfigured and her mom sold her to a family, where she
She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will--as powerless as her two white slender hands would have been. When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over...
She begins talking about her childhood and who raised her until she was three years old. The woman who raised her was Thrupkaew’s “auntie”, a distant relative of the family. The speaker remembers “the thick, straight hair, and how it would come around [her] like a curtain when she bent to pick [her] up” (Thrupkaew). She remembers her soft Thai accent, the way she would cling to her auntie even if she just needed to go to the bathroom. But she also remembers that her auntie would be “beaten and slapped by another member of my family. [She] remembers screaming hysterically and wanting it to stop, as [she] did every single time it happened, for things as minor as…being a little late” (Thrupkaew). She couldn’t bear to see her beloved family member in so much pain, so she fought with the only tool she had: her voice. Instead of ceasing, her auntie was just beaten behind closed doors. It’s so heart-breaking for experiencing this as a little girl, her innocence stolen at such a young age. For those who have close family, how would it make you feel if someone you loved was beaten right in front of you? By sharing her story, Thrupkaew uses emotion to convey her feelings about human
Perhaps one of the biggest issues foreigners will come upon is to maintain a strong identity within the temptations and traditions from other cultures. Novelist Frank Delaney’s image of the search for identity is one of the best, quoting that one must “understand and reconnect with our stories, the stories of the ancestors . . . to build our identities”. For one, to maintain a firm identity, elderly characters often implement Chinese traditions to avoid younger generations veering toward different traditions, such as the Western culture. As well, the Chinese-Canadians of the novel sustain a superior identity because of their own cultural village in Vancouver, known as Chinatown, to implement firm beliefs, heritage, and pride. Thus in Wayson Choy’s, The Jade Peony, the novel discusses the challenge for different characters to maintain a firm and sole identity in the midst of a new environment with different temptations and influences. Ultimately, the characters of this novel rely upon different influences to form an identity, one of which being a strong and wide elderly personal
Innovates by finding a new product, a new service, or a new approach to a social problem.