...Draft 2: Joy Luck Club Close Reading In this section of the chapter “A Pair of Tickets,” is about Jing Mei, a grown woman who has just flown to China to fulfill her mother’s greatest wish, to see her first born daughters who live in China. Unexpectedly, Jing Mei’s mom had been struck by a cerebral aneurysm and had died from it. Jing Mei is seeing her sisters for the first time ever, and she is nervous. Who wouldn’t be nervous seeing to daughters that you’ve never seen before in your life, and telling them that their mother is dead? Even though the plot seems really dark and it builds a lot of negative suspense, because of Jing Mei’s nervousness, this scene in the story is rather happy and forgiving in many ways. It offers many kinds of bright words and lines like “as my sisters look at me proudly,” “the three of us embracing,” and “bright colors of the three images.” At first I thought the sisters would have been crestfallen to hear of their mother’s fate, and ultimately blame the bad news on Jing Mei. Instead, they treat Jing Mei as if they’ve known her their entire life. The tone in this passage is extremely happy and reading it itself can easily bring tears to one’s face. Amy Tan structures this passage brilliantly, with the carefully chosen words and just how she makes everything bright...
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...Campbell’s philosophy, he believes there are two types of deeds a hero can go through, a psychological and a physical. And in the Joy Luck Club Jing-mei goes through a psychological transformation to make a psychological deed. Campbell introduces this idea of a psychological deed in one of his interviews on PBS, “ The other kind is the spiritual deed, in which the hero learns to experience the supernormal range of human spiritual life and then comes back with a message.” After reading the Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, it...
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...Summary and Analysis Jing-Mei Woo: A Pair of Tickets Jing-mei is on a train to China, traveling with her seventy-two-year-old father, Canning Woo. As the train enters Shenzhen, China, Jing-mei begins to "feel Chinese." Their first stop will be Guangzhou. Like her father, Jing-mei is weeping for joy. After her mother's death, a letter arrived from China from her mother's twin daughters from her first marriage. These were the two children whom she was forced to abandon on the side of the road in 1944. Jing-mei's father asked Auntie Lindo to write back to the girls and tell them that their mother was dead. Instead, Auntie Lindo took the letter to the Joy Luck Club. Together, the women answered the letter, signing Suyuan Woo's name to it. Jing-mei agrees that she should be the one to tell her half-sisters about their mother's death. But after dreaming about the scene many times, she begs Auntie Lindo to write a letter to the sisters explaining that their mother is dead. Auntie Lindo does so. The train pulls into the station, and the visitors are met by Canning's great-aunt. The reunion is emotional. Other relatives join them. Jing-mei wins her young cousin Lili over with instant photographs from her Polaroid camera. They soon arrive at a magnificent hotel, much grander than Jing-mei had expected. Jing-mei is anxious to have her first real Chinese feast; however, the native-born Chinese family decides that they want to eat American — hamburgers, French fries, and apple pie...
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...experiencing the culture shock can make people feel uneasy and it can also help you find your identity. You notice the differences between the cultures, such as in the type of clothing and cuisine. When I moved here from Florida, I was very uneasy because I wasn’t sure how I was going to be treated when I arrived. I remember thinking that Maryland was in the north and it was always cold there. My perception of Maryland was ice skating, snowboarding, and snowball fights all of the time. I didn’t think I would be able to handle that after living in sunny Florida my whole life. I was very nervous and cautious of my new surroundings. In A Pair of Tickets by Amy Tan, Jing-mei visits her mother's homeland of China to meet her twin half-sisters for the first time and to find her Chinese identity. Jing-mei was also nervous and cautious about her trip to China because she had never been there before and only knew of it from her mother’s stories. Jing-mei was also nervous about meeting her twin half-sisters. Jing-mei and her father travel to China to carry out Jing-mei’s mothers’ final wish of having all of her daughters meet each other. While fleeing from one town in China that was about to be taken over by Japanese, Jing-mei’s mother, Suyuan, had to leave her twin baby girls on the side of the road. She traveled on foot from the town while carrying her twin baby girls and as many belongings as she could. Before deciding on setting her girls down, she had discarded all of her food...
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...the beginning of “Two Kinds”. Jing Mei’s mother only wanted to push Jing Mei to succeed only because she didn’t want her to have to go through all she had been through in her early years. “America was where all my mother's hopes lay” suggested her mother has already lost everything and was desperately hoping to create a better life in America for Jing Mei. Throughout the story Jing Mei’s mother pushed Jing Mei to be the best she can be and explained to her that there are only two kinds of daughters, “Those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind.” In the first part of the story, Jing Mei’s mother pushes her to become a child prodigy, a genius and famous. Jing Mei has internal conflicts with herself because she only wants to be herself. What she doesn’t realize is she can be herself while becoming the things her mother is trying to push her to be. Since Jing Mei’s mother doesn’t yet know that Jing Mei will soon start to rebel, her mother seems to push harder and harder. With Jing Mei’s mother desperately trying to live up to the “American Dream”, she buys Jing Mei a piano. The piano plays a substantial role in the story. It seems as if the piano represents what her mother wants for Jing Mei. However, Jing Mei does not want these things for herself. Some may think that the mother is trying to live her life through Jing Mei, but overall it seems that Jing Mei’s mother only wanted Jing Mei to live the American dream. The song Jing Mei performed came unnoticed by...
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...Kinds”, written by Amy Tan, is written from the point of view of the character named Jing-Mei. There are three experiences which demonstrate her viewpoint. In the first experience, Jing-Mei is being told by her mom about the “American dream”. At first, she strives to pursue this prodigy. Her mom would test her every night after dinner. Through Jing-Mei’s eyes, she starts to realize that it was not the life she wanted to live. Lines in the story illustrate this when he says “I won’t let her change me, I promised myself. I won’t be what I’m not.” (p.406). In the second experience, Jing-Mei performs in a talent show. Her mother forced her to learn how to play the piano. After seeing a little girl playing the piano magnificently, her mother was inspired to make Jing-Mei become a famous pianist. Through her eyes, she was not really concerned about playing well and didn’t practiced efficiently. As a result, when she played her piece at the talent show, she fumbled on some notes. As it suddenly became a snowball effect. At this point, Jing-Mei felt ashamed of herself and was not satisfied with how her performance went. Indeed, we see this exact thought in the lines of the story when she states, “my whole face quivering as I tried not to cry” (p.410). In the third experience, we see Jing-Mei at home about two days after the talent show. After her mom kept reminding her about her usual four o’clock lesson, Jing-Mei replies that she was not going to play the piano anymore. This angered her mother...
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...Read the ‘Biography of Ching K’o’ (Jing Ke) and identify one or two incidents that are used/not used in the film, and make an argument as to whether the inclusion/exclusion is desirable, artistically or thematically, (for instance, whether it is a good choice to eliminate the incidents that show the assassin is not a good swordsman). You may also find in the film the incidents that are not in the Biography and comment on the addition in the same aforementioned manner. The movie “Emperor and Assassin” is a movie filmed by the famous director Zhang Yi Mou in the 90s. It portrays the assassin Jing Ke's attempt to kill Ying Zheng, the emperor of Qin as a humanitarian act. In the movie, after Ying Zheng conquers the state of Zhao, he kills all the children in the fear that they might grow up to take revenge on him. This breaks the heart of his wife, Lady Zhao, who was a citizen of Zhao. Seeing the heartbroken Lady Zhao and all the children’s corpses, Jing Ke, who at first refuses to perform the assassination because of his vow to never kill, decides to accept the mission because he does not want to witness any more premature deaths. Although there is no evidence in history suggesting that Jing Ke accepted the mission for a humanitarian cause, the movie seems to interpret it as if he did. Jing Ke’s assassination fails. The imperial doctor Xua Wu Ju strikes him with a medicine bag and injures him, which gives Ying Zheng the chance to strike back and finish him. As an elite...
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...mother and daughter relationships are considered a theme. The cultural differences between a mother and her daughter, Jing-mei, really take a toll on their personal relationship. The struggle that a mother has in wanting her child to have a better life and all have all the opportunities that she didn’t have growing up drives her mother to the point of almost unrealistic expectations for her daughter to be good at something and become known as a ‘prodigy.’ Throughout this story, Jing-mei learns a little about herself and in the end, later in life, begins to understand her mother and her expectations for her as well. Jing-mei’s mother believed America held all the possibilities in the world along with the ability to become anything you wanted to be; if you were dedicated to something Her mother has high hopes for her daughter becoming a prodigy. She does not know what her talent is, but explores and considers all sorts of possibilities that stem from her reading magazine articles on amazing kids in “Ripley’s Believe It Or Not” and other popular magazines. Jing-mei was forced to take piano lessons from Mr.Chong, a retired piano teacher who was deaf. He could not hear her off-key notes that she would play in her attempts to not try to learn how to play. Mr. Chong’s eyes were too slow to keep up with her hitting the wrong notes, so she gets away with it. Jing-mei's mother brags about her daughter's "natural pride," and is determined to put an end to her mother’s boasting an an...
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...story to show the reader the main character’s aha moment and how she reached that moment. When Ford discusses short stories in his article, he seems to think that there is a moment in every story that changes the life of the main character. He believes that they “make us believe that entire lives can change…on account of one little manufactured moment of clear-sightedness.2” Whatever his opinions on short stories, one thing he said really stood out: moment of clear-sightedness. He believes that one moment in the story stands out more than the rest because of the effect it has on the story. He explains that something magical happens in every story that causes the main characters life to makes sense and come together. Is this even possible? To understand Jing-Mei the reader needs to know a bit more about her background: In “Two Kinds,” Jing-Mei laments over how horrible her life was while her mother attempted to make her a perfect child. Her mother lost everything in China, and moved to America in order to have a better life. Putting all of her efforts into making Jing-Mei a prodigy put serious strain on their relationship, causing tension between them. Jing-Mei is finally able to be happy when her mother gives up and allows her to just be a kid and not to have to worry about pleasing anybody or trying to become something she’s not. But how did she reach her breaking point? Or as Ford would call it, her moment? Jing-Mei’s mother tells her to go and practice piano after the talent...
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...occur, that they want more than that as they choose to live out their own dreams through their children. The latter is what the text ”Two Kinds” by Amy Tan deals with. The short story Two Kinds is a text written with a first-person narrator. The agonist in the text is a girl named Jing-Mei. Both of her parents are from china, but they now live in America, where Jing-Mei is born. As the story moves on, we follow Jing-Mei, and how her parents, mostly her mother, have always had extremely high expectations to her. We see, that she enjoys this in the beginning: “In fact, in the beginning, I was just as excited as my mother, maybe even more so. I pictured this prodigy part of me as many different images, trying each one on for size.”(P. 107, L. 22-24). What we also can draw out of this quote, is the aforementioned expectations from her mother, as we hear that the mother is excited for her daughter perhaps being a prodigy. Following Jing-Mei further, we see that she goes through a development. Every night after dinner her mother gives her some tests, in hope of her daughter becoming a prodigy – and as time goes on, she grows tired of these tests. Ultimately this results in her disappointing the mother. Jing-Mei is as described earlier a dynamic character. She seems somewhat stubborn, as she does not wish to be changed just because of the way the mother wants her to be. That also explains why she does not wish to play the piano, as the only reason for her to play piano, is because she...
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...photographs they take in the story embody symbolism and turn this story into a remarkable account of family and how it is one of life’s unbreakable bonds. The importance of symbolism in this short story makes it come alive to the reader. To summarize of Amy Tans “A Pair of Tickets” we look at the main character, Jing-mei. She is on a train, with her father, heading to China to visit her family. She speaks of not feeling like she is really Chinese. Although all of her family is Chinese, she grew up in America because that is where her parents moved during the Japanese invasion of China. They first visit the town of Guangzhou, where her father’s great aunt is waiting to see them. This is the first time the reader gets a glimpse of Jing-mei being interested in her Chinese heritage. “The minute our train leaves the Hong Kong border and enters Shenzhen, China, I feel different. I can feel the skin on my forehead tingling, my blood rushing through a new course, my bones aching with a familiar old pain. And I think, my mother was right. I am becoming Chinese.” (Norton, 189.) They go to a grand hotel with some family members and decide to eat dinner together, which Jing-mei is excited about because it would be her first real Chinese dinner. Instead, the family wants to eat American food. They eat dinner together and Jing-mei’s father talks of her mother and her connection to China. Jing-mei’s mother, Suyuan, had three children. During the invasion of Japan into China, she...
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...In the Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, a American born daughter of Chinese immigrants, a variety of collisions within Chinese-American cultures is explained. Most significantly the characters of Jing-Mei, representing the Americanized new generation of Chinese culture, and Suyuan, representing the Old Chinese generation, exemplify this throughout the novel. For instance, when Jing-Mei Woo or “June”, the daughter of Suyuan Woo, who founded the Joy Luck Club, is introduced, she represents the Americanized new generation of the Chinese daughters in the story, which can already be inferred because of the Americanization of her name from Jing-Mei to “June”. She struggles with accepting her heritage and -like the other daughters in the novel- is a conformist to American culture and society, trying to abandon Chinese customs and values. While her mother, Suyuan Woo, represents the mothers in the story who are the older Chinese generation with laid back values and expectations trying to ensure an opulent life for their children....
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...last for long or maybe never really grew. In this short story “A Pair of Tickets” and poem “Hanging Fire” show a difference in each relationship. In “A pair of Tickets” the character Jing-mei, is an American Woman on a pilgrimage to China to meet her half-sisters, who were also abandoned by her mother in China during World War II. Jing-mei’s mother hoped to reunite with her daughters, but she had died from a severe heart condition called aneurysm. In the beginning of this short story Jing-mei and her mother have a conversation about how she denies at all being Chinese. Her mother responds with, “Someday you will see”, “It is in your blood, waiting to be let go.”(263) Her mother’s friend saw her twin half-sisters in China and with encouragement from her aunt’s, and carrying out her mother’s dream she decided to make the trip with her father and go back home to China. But Jing-mei is dreading to go back and is afraid that her half-sisters will blame her for their mother’s death. For example, when she was speaking to her aunt about how she couldn’t tell them that her mother was dead through a letter. She explained how she felt as though she is responsible. “They’ll think I’m responsible, that she died because I didn’t appreciate her.”(266) At first when she sees her half-sisters she is startled by how they look so much like her mother, then she realized there really is no resemblance at all. Finally, she notices what makes them look so familiar isn’t there physical features but what...
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...Journal 1: Answering the Telephone For this project I surveyed and researched the “Telephone Response Violation.” By doing so I would answer my phone and not say a word then I would jot down my observations of the other persons response. However, before I started my violation survey I was really quite worried. It doesn’t matter if you’re in China or America; it’s an impolite behavior to not answer or greet when someone phones you. Perhaps the person calling me might think I accidently hit the wrong button or something, which would potentially lead to them hanging up and redialing me again. I assume if I don’t answer within 5 seconds the person calling me would just hang-up and try again or try text messaging me. The past few days that I have been attempting the survey has been a bit difficult for me because I am use to always answering with “hello.” However, I made a concerted effort and achieved good results for this project. My friend, Savina, and I were planning on hanging out Thursday afternoon. I waited for her to pick me up at the CRCC business building. She called me when she arrived, and I answered her phone call, but didn’t say a word. This (non-conversation) silence lasted for 23 seconds and then she asked “hello Caroline, are you there?” I did not expect this patient reaction from her. After we met, I asked her why she waited on the phone for a whole 23 seconds instead of saying something immediately. Her response to why she didn’t say something sooner and instead...
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...B. “Two Kinds”, demonstrate that parents have no control over their children’s lives; both authors describe a childhood conflict they can only show them the right direction and let them make their own decisions. II. Body A. Jing-mei’s early life, works , later years of life 1. Jing-mei mother persists with piano 2. Jing-mei can be a prodigy too. 3. “Only one kind of daughter, obedient daughter.” B. Dee’s early life, works, later years of life. 1. Dee’s education 2. Dee’s considered herself as cultured 3. Dee is selfish and egotistical character with a superficial understanding of her inheritance. III. Conclusion A. Analytical summary 1. Jing-mei and Dee early life 2. Jing-mei and Dee works 3. Jing-mei and Dee Later years B. Thesis reworded C. Conclusion Statement. Although mother-daughter conflicts are to be expected, the central conflict in the aforementioned relationship is a battle of wills between Jing-mei and her mother and Dee and her mother. For example, even though Dee's mother believes that quilts are for everyday use, Dee believes that they are cultural artifacts that must be preserved. Dee in “Everyday Use” and Ms. Johnson, her mother have major conflicting views that are similar to the identity conflicts that Jing-mei and her mother have. We observe moments of disappointment in both short stories. In “Two Kinds”, Amy Tan describes the numerous attempts that her overly ambitious Chinese mother made to propel her to stardom....
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