Two Kinds By Amy Tan Literary Analysis

“Two Kinds” by Amy Tan is a story that shows a battle that starts with the narrator and her mother, for control over the narrator’s life. Her mother wanted her to become a prodigy, but she wanted to be anything other than that. So, throughout the short story “Two Kinds” she’s determined to not quit the fight. “Two Kinds” is filled with different forms of conflict which allows for the narrator to realize that her mother’s crazy antics were to help her find what she was good at. The narrator conquers the twoness in her life after 18 years by using the conflicts of her past, and it leads to her growth in maturity and her development of a writer. Twoness is “the fact or condition of being two or doubleness” (Oxford Dictionary). Also known

Therefore, her own belief of what is perfect meant she wouldn’t be a movie star, genius, or a piano player. This is due to her lack of awareness of what her mother wanted to accomplish, and leads to the narrator’s emotional outburst. “Why don’t you like me for who I am?” … I’m not a genius! I can’t play the piano… “Who asked you to be a genius?” … “Only ask you be your best. For you sake. You think I want you to be genius? … What for! Who ask you?!” (132). She didn’t understand what exactly her mother was trying to do for her and her mother’s goal wasn’t shown properly. The goal her mother wanted was to be the best and that translated in her mind as being a person who is a genius; an “innate intellectual or creative power of an exceptional or exalted type, such as is attributed to those people considered greatest in any area of art, science, etc.; instinctive and extraordinary capacity for imaginative creation, original thought, invention, or discovery” (Oxford dictionary). The narrator felt as if she couldn’t do what she wanted to due to her not being able to do what her mother expected from her when given the many tests and not being successful at play the

She no longer believed in what her mother wanted and so she wanted to prove her wrong. The urge to prove her mother wrong caused her to not learn the song “Pleading Child” for the piano recital. Not learning the song fully resulted in her embarrassing herself in front of an audience, and caused her to get angry with her mother and say, “I wish I’d never been born!” I shouted. “I wish I were dead! Like them” (137). Those few words are what affected her mother emotionally and mentally, but she didn’t see the effect of “I wish I were dead! Like them” due to her being twelve. This statement left her with the feeling of being contended with the idea that she got out of her mother’s urge to form her into what she doesn’t want to be, yet there was no longer a push for her to be