Mother Knows Best
Often times in literature, character relationships change and evolve. “Two Kinds” written by Amy Tan, is a story about a daughter’s uncertain feelings toward her mother. Overtime, the mother-daughter relationship gets ruined when the daughter does not believe in her potential to be a child prodigy as strongly as her mother does. After an attentive analysis of the story, the reader is aware of how Jing-mei’s feelings toward her mother changes, why they did so, and how those changes affected the entire story.
Throughout the story, Jing-mei’s feeling toward her mother change in critical ways. As a young child, Jing-mei wants constant attention from her mother, going so far as agreeing to become a child prodigy. In the story, Jing-mei commented, “In fact, in the beginning, I was just as excited as my mother, maybe even more so” (Tan 221). This was before her mother becomes highly adamant about wanting her child to become a prodigy. As time went on, she wanted Jing-mei to become the epitome of a child star. Jing-mei expresses, “Soon after my mother got this idea about Shirley Temple, she took me to a beauty training student in the Mission district and put me in the hands of a student who could barely hold the scissors without shaking. Instead of big fat curls, I emerged with an uneven mass of crinkly black fuzz” (Tan 221). This shows that her mother’s eagerness for a famous daughter is emerging, and it comes to the point where she wants to change her child’s