The Chinese Story Two Kinds - Essay Example

Opinion Essay on Two Selected Stories Story 1: “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan This story has a nostalgic and bittersweet feel to it, and like all good stories, attempts to get a meaningful message across. The author narrates moments in the life of a young girl, Jing-Mei, who is the daughter of a Chinese immigrant mother who has great aspirations for her. The mother wants Jing-Mei to be a success in life, or as she puts it, “[…] you can be prodigy, too. You can be best anything.” (Tan 1) “Two Kinds” would make an excellent subject-matter for next semester’s classes because of its clean, simple writing style and the purity of the imagery the author creates with her words. It is very easy to picture the scenes described, to feel the constant strife between mother and daughter as the mother pushes her daughter to be something better, while the daughter rebels, doubting her abilities and wanting only to “be herself,” not realizing that she does have it in her to be anything that she wants. After carefully studying Shirley Temple to become “the Chinese Shirley Temple” and then giving up that idea when a hair stylist from the Mission District gives little Jing-Mei an afro instead of round, silky curls, Jing-Mei’s mother urges her to become a child genius, drilling her on questions from geography to math and everything in between. Jing-Mei quickly becomes tired of this and her mother decides that she will be a pianist. She trades housecleaning for Mr. Chong from downstairs for piano lessons and practice time on his piano for her daughter and Jing-Mei actually sticks to this regimen for a while. Unfortunately, Jing-Mei goes through the lessons without any desire to excel, taking advantage of the fact that old Mr. Chong is so hard of hearing that he is practically deaf can’t hear her mistakes, and when the time comes to put on a recital at the Joy Luck Club, things come to a head. Jing-Mei seems curiously surprised to find that her piano-playing is a flop, much to her dismay. All this is narrated so poignantly but at the same time so matter-of-factly (in the first person), that you really feel for both mother and daughter, the mother because of her loss of hope after Jing-Mei’s failure and the ensuing argument where Jing-Mei says some terrible things to her, and the daughter because she gives up so easily and almost in spite of herself, knowing that she could do so much better. The story ends with Jing-Mei, now a grown woman, being given the piano by her mother for her thirtieth birthday. This part is special because Jing-Mei comes to realize that the piano really means something to her. She doesn’t have it moved from her mother’s home to her own, though, but leaves it there until later, when her mother has died and she decides to have it tuned. She looks at the sheet music for the recital she played so long ago, a piece called “Pleading Child” and plays it, then goes on to play the piece on the opposite page “Perfectly Content,” which she never really paid much attention to before. And after she plays them both a few times, she comes to realize that they are two halves of the same song (Tan 8). I liked this story because of its style, the subject (a mother-daughter relationship), and the drama it depicts, showing that there can be a little bit of the theatrical and the tragic even in everyday life, and that sometimes giving in, even if only a tiny bit, to the hopes our parents have for us, can actually be to our benefit, because in their believing in us we can more easily believe in ourselves. It spoke to me on a deep emotional level, and made me see that it is much better to have parents who have grand aspirations for their children and give them support, than parents who don’t think their children will amount to anything, making the children feel that they have to prove them wrong. Story 2: “Repent, Harlequin!” said the Ticktockman” by Harlan Ellison This story is in high contrast to the previous one, which would make them both an excellent combination for study, precisely because they are so different. This one is set in the future, in the 24th century, and also has a definite statement to make. The author begins by quoting Henry David Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience, where the parts that read “The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. […] Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. […] Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. A very few […] serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it" are effectively expounded upon in Ellison’s subsequent story, giving the impression that he was directly inspired to write it by Thoreau. The Harlequin and the Ticktockman are the story’s two main characters, and complete opposites in both their function and personality. The Ticktockman is the Master Timekeeper in a futuristic society that follows the clock like the Bible, responsible for “terminating” those who are tardy and therefore lose minutes, hours, days, or even years of their lives in order to make up for the times when they were late for anything. Everyone has a “cardioplate” that is implanted in the body and remotely controlled by the Ticktockman, who activates a “termination mode” of sorts when someone’s “time is up”. The Harlequin, on the other hand, has no regard for time and is late for everything, but has managed to escape termination so far because he has jealously kept his identity a secret (here Ellison infers that this information is necessary in order for the Ticktockman to be able to terminate someone). There are many words in the story that seem to have been invented specifically for it. An example is one passage that reads “To his staff, to all the ferrets, all the loggers, all the finks, all the commex, even the mineez, he said “Who is this Harlequin?” (Ellison 2) where “commex” and “mineez” seem to be referring to a certain level of the working class, although the meaning of the words is never actually explained, adding some degree of mystery to the story. The writing style is all but common, peppered with strange fabricated words throughout, and more of a challenge to read than, for example, Amy Tan’s “Two Kinds”. In one part the Harlequin is (apparently in true form) causing disruption by showering the workers who are about to start their shift at the “Timkin roller-bearing plant” with none other than jelly beans, which he throws from aboard his “air-boat”. He ends up causing a seven-minute delay in the carefully oiled clockwork that is this meticulously time-oriented society. For some reason, this scene and the way it was narrated reminded me of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, perhaps because of a certain magical quality it has to it. Sadly, the Harlequin’s true identity is discovered, and he is found and brought to the Ticktockman’s justice. Surprisingly enough, the Harlequin is not terminated, but sent to somewhere called Coventry, where he undergoes some type of procedure that Ellison refers to as “just like what they did to Winston Smith in 1984”, a clear nod to Orson Welles’ classic book. The Harlequin ends up speaking publicly in favor of the society he so openly showed disregard for in the past. As a matter of fact, there are several parallelisms in common between Repent Harlequin and 1984, the most obvious being the similarity between the Timekeeping concept and Big Brother. This story is thought-provoking and has a rather haunting effect, leaving the reader with a lot of those what-if questions that can linger for days. What Quality Literature Means to Me Quality literature is all about education, entertainment and art. There is no substitute for an engrossing story or book, which allows the reader to become a part of the writer’s world, with the liberty of creating images based on the words set before him, images as individual as the reader himself, who renders his own private world with the help, in turn, of the author’s own imagination. Quality is achieved in the proper use of grammar and style. Undoubtedly, a well-written piece is much easier on the brain and on the eyes than one that has mistakes or flaws in grammar, punctuation or spelling, which is evidently one of the reasons why not just anyone can be a successful writer. The ability of a narration to teach the reader something new or reveal things about himself that he did not know before is no small thing. It takes a very talented writer to engage the reader in the story and keep him there for the duration, while at the same time leaving a lasting impression and taking him through a myriad of emotions or discoveries along the way. Literature is an invaluable way of expanding the mind, of reaching the heart and soul and of possibly even changing people’s lives. Quality literature does all these things and can do so in this century or the next. Literature that can stand the test of time is assuredly of good quality, more so than the bestsellers of the moment, many of which come and go but often lack in originality and true content. It can be said that the artistic value of literature greatly relies on its interpretation by its readers. Unlike paintings or movies, where what you see is what you get, literature lets the reader paint a picture that will be unlike any other, and that will remain in the private world of that person, unseen by the eyes of others. Bibliography Tan, Amy. “Two Kinds” from The Joy Luck Club. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1989. Ellison, Harlan; Berry, Rick (illustrator). “Repent, Harlequin!” Said the Ticktockman: The Classic Story. Underwood Books. 1997 Read More