Two Kinds Character Analysis

1228 Words5 Pages
Most children struggle to establish who they are. In ‘Two Kinds’, does Jing-Mei know who she is or is she struggling because of her mother’s view? Throughout the entire story, her mother is pushing her daughter to be the best or to be a prodigy which leads Jing-Mei to struggle within herself on who she can be. As she struggled, she had two halves pulling at her which was her mother’s expectations and her thoughts telling her she wasn’t anything special. As she grew up, she accepted defeat that she was nothing yet she did struggle because she has potential to become anything she’d like. In the beginning of the story, Jing-Mei entertains the idea of changing herself because of her age. She imagines the different personas because finally her…show more content…
I didn’t become class president. I didn’t get into Stanford. I dropped out of college.” (Tan 327). She decided from early on she could never be capable so she set out to be exactly what she mother didn’t want. Later on, her mother gifted her the piano and told her she knew her daughter had natural talent. Jing-Mei knew she did too which leads to the thought that she truly did bury that side of her. When her mother died, she went to play the piano and started to play the song she did at the recital. Then she found another piece called ‘Perfectly Contented’ which matched the first piece, “Pleading Child was shorter but slower; Perfectly Contented was longer but faster. And after I had played them both a few times, I realized they were two halves of the same song.” (Tan 328). This realization is what she’d been missing all these years. She’d been missing the two halves that completed who she was. She was no longer the pleading child that was angry because she wasn’t perfect or a genius. She finally was perfectly content with the natural talent she
Show More
Related

  • Two Kinds Literary Analysis Essay

    1418 Words  | 6 Pages

    Literary Analysis of Two Kinds by Amy Tan Two Kinds is a short story by Amy Tan in the book The Joy Luck Club. Tan writes about the intricacy of a daughter and a mother relationship who migrated from China to America. The short story is about a Chinese-American girl named Jing-mei. Jing-mei lived in American and her mother believed that, as long as one lives in America, he/she can be anything she could ever wish to be and therefore, she was working hard to find her daughter’s talent. Jing-mei’s mother

    Read More

  • Yellow Wallpaper Compare And Contrast

    2032 Words  | 9 Pages

    Compare and Contrast “Two Kinds” written by Amy Tan and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman are stories and reading that show the family relationships. They are two different stories but, have quite similarities. The similarity between the two stories is to me is the reaction of their love one when at the time they are too assertive, forceful and overbearing towards people they care. In “Two Kinds” story the author demonstrates the relationship between a mother and daughter, which

    Read More

More about Two Kinds Character Analysis

Open Document