Thang Khup
ENGL 1102
Diebert
10/10/2014

Two kinds Two kinds is the story about a Chinese mother who migrated to American. The story is representing the relationship between every mother and children. In the story, the high expectation that every mother have on their children can be seemed. Also how the children feel when they are fall short of the expectation that their parents have on them can be seemed. Since the mother in the story lost everything back in China, she determined to get back everything she lost in the new place. And she believed that she was standing in the land of opportunity. The only way for her to gain everything she lost was through her daughter. Therefore she piled up all of her hope and expectation on her daughter and tried to train her as much as she could to make her what she wanted her to be. The symbols in the story, the different beliefs the characters are adapted to and the literary terms that the authors used make the story alive.
The first symbols that I see is when the author described the way her teacher look. Amy Tan said her teacher lost most of his hair, wore thick glasses and had eyes that looked tired. It seemed like her teacher looked very old. However, in the reality her teacher was younger than he looked (225). This described something about her. Her piano teacher looked old. However, in the reality he was very young. Likewise, she was full of talent in her mother’s eyes. According to the Amy Tan “ the tests got harder-multiplying numbers in my head, finding the queen of hearts in a deck of cards, trying to stand on my head without using my hands, predicting the daily temperatures in LA, New York and London”(P223). This line approve that her mother thought her daughter was full of talents. However, from her point of view she had no talent at all. In the story Amy Tan was sent to a piano teacher who was deaf and couldn’t hear any wrong notes that she was playing. This represent about her life too. Whenever she played the wrong notes, her teacher was unable to notice it. Amy Tan said “I would play after him, the simple scale, the simple chord, and then I just played some nonsense that sounded like a cat running up and down on top of garbage cans. Old Chong smiled and applauded and said, very good” (p225). This quotation showed the lack of her teacher’s ability to notice what she really was playing right in front of his face. Just like Amy Tan was sent to deaf piano teacher who couldn’t notice her errors, she was controlling by her mother who couldn’t notice who she really was and her unwillingness to take the different test that her mother came up with. the unwillingness of the author can be seem in the line where she said “ I played a game with myself, seeing if my mother would give up on me before eight bellows” (224). It is very clear that Amy Tan revealed her unwillingness to her mother. However, her mother couldn’t notice it. The more wrong notes she played on the piano, the more applauded she got from her teacher. Likewise, when she showed her unwillingness to corporate with her mother and revealed who she really was, the test that she had to take increase. Therefore, the fact that she was sent to deaf piano teacher resemble her life. I also find that the two songs that the author played at the end were also the symbols of her life. These songs seemed to represent her life and the meaning behind her and her mother’s attitudes and relationship with one another. Amy Tan became to understand about her mother when she became adult. She became to understand that all that her mother did was just for her. Since her mother knew how hard life was without the talent that could help her, she always figured out the talent inside her daughter. However, the author never understood about her mother feeling. After her mother’s death, she went back to the piano and realized that “Pleading Child” was