The conflict between parents and teenagers is that when the children do something they think is good some parents do not give them all the encouragement they need; a protagonist in a short story felt the same way: “Why don’t you like me the way I am? I’m not a genius! I can’t play the piano. And even if I could, I wouldn’t go on TV if you paid me a million dollars!” I cried” (Tan 225). In the short story “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan, Jing-mei, the protagonist of the story, tries unsuccessfully to live up to her mother’s expectations; however, as time goes on, she resents the pressure and becomes angry at her mother, which results in conflict. Unreasonable expectations cause conflict or rebellion in people. Using Diction, Syntax, Details, Imagery/images, and Language, Tan, and Mark develop the theme that because concerned parents often …show more content…
In the story as Jing-mei’s mother tested her over and over again; as a result, Jing-mei starts to perform “listlessly” (Tan 223) in her studies and tests. Cacophonous diction helps a reader visualize something happening in the story using sounds; the quote, “I started counting the bellows of the foghorns” (Tan 223) is an example of this. This quote gives the reader the deep sound of the bellows while symbolizing how bored the narrator is. This part of the story shows how bored she was with her mom and that her mom started to give up hope that her daughter would be a prodigy. The syntax of the text influences how the reader reads the passage, such as when the author says “I pretended to be bored. And I was” (Tan 223). These simple sentences show an uninteresting tone, just how Jing-Mei feels. As the reader reads, they get the indication of boredom, through more than diction, imagery, etc. Tan shows the conflict between mothers and their kids when they are trying to force their kids to do something that they don’t want to