Amy Tan Thesis

Being a parent is something anyone can do. Only the competent ones, however, can raise a child that surpasses oneself--a child that will revitalize one’s purpose. Sharing a faulty/disconnected dynamic, the mother and child in the stories “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan and “Rice and Rose Bowl Blues” by Mei Lin Mark have trouble communicating what one wants to the other and why a working consensus cannot be reached. Both sets of characters in their respective stories have a similar problem and struggle throughout the story that is never properly resolved. Using similes, figurative language, syntax, and connotative diction, Tan and Mark reveal the theme that when children are given unreasonably high expectations when they are young, they are put into

The first quote that is shown in “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan makes excellent use of a simile when describing how the child in the story, Jing-mei, feels when saying these horrible things to her mother whilst in a verbal dispute. During an argument about how Jing-mei has stopped believing in herself and why her mother should stop trying and testing her, Jing-mei describes the things she says as “...worms and toads and slimy things were crawling out of my chest, but it also felt good…” (Tan 230. This quote is significant because of how the reader can understand deeper how these words made Jing-mei feel. A simile was one of the only ways that this could be done because of how much more freedom can be had when describing one sensation with another instead of an arbitrary array of descriptions; furthermore, used by Tan is another devise in the form of imagery to describe the situation Jing-mei is facing when she looks herself in the mirror and begins losing herself. In her earlier stages of the testing her mother put her through, Jing-mei goes into the bathroom and stares into the device displaying only the worst of her character, this elicits a mental breakdown; in her words, “...I saw only my face staring back--and that it would always be this ordinary face--I began to cry. Such a sad, ugly girl! I made high-pitched noises like a crazed animal, trying to scratch out the face in the mirror” (Tan 223). All of the tests have gotten to her and the mirror allows her to reflect on the draining experiences that have happened to her since then. Tan then describes the movements and things she says to herself using imagery. Imagery and Figurative language--two tools used by Amy Tan to express everything that needs to be