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Rules Of The Game By Amy Tan Theme

927 Words4 Pages

Noe Vorbau
Period 6
5/26/23
“Rules of The Game”
“Why do you have to use me to show off? If you want to show off, then why don’t you learn to play chess?” These are the bold words of a girl who is afraid to speak up to her mother (Tan 221-222). The short story, “Rules of The Game '' is about a girl named Waverly who learned to come of age with her strict mother. Waverly’s brother, Vincent got a chess set for Christmas, and ever since then, Waverly had been a chess prodigy. After a long journey and many games, she began to win lots of tournaments against people of all ages. Then, her mother introduced Waverly to the world by showing her off and this made Waverly upset. Waverly proceeded to run away and lost track of her surroundings. When she returned, her family was ashamed of her, displaying no announced resolution. The theme of the short story, “Rules of The Game” by Amy Tan is that the journey is what matters. This is conveyed by Waverly’s relationship with her brothers, her mom using her, and Waverly continuing to lose.
To begin, the relationship between Waverly and her brothers holds a significance to the theme. When Vincent first got the chess board for Christmas, he did not let Waverly …show more content…

When Waverly first met Lau Po, she lost many games but did not give up. “I lost many games and many Life Savers”. This quote explains how towards the beginning of Waverly’s chess journey, she kept on losing games over and over. Therefore, Waverly thought that she could never get better at this point in the story. She did not realize that each time she lost she got better and learned from her losses. Although she lost almost all of the games against Lau Po, she explained how she had become a better chess player. This happened after Lau Po taught her all he knew throughout the summer. It is clearly shown how she got better over the summer because she was a much worse chess player than she was at the end of the

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