Paper Menagerie Symbolism Essay

In Ken Liu’s short story “Paper Menagerie” Jack, a naive Asian-American adolescent, lives alongside his family in America. Unlike Jack’s father, his Chinese mother was a significant figure throughout his childhood. She was his shoulder to cry on, someone who could lift him up when he was down. That was until he conformed to the matrix of society and they grew distant from each other. Caught up in his own self-righteousness, Jack’s mother passes away rendering him sorrowful. Liu utilizes symbolism and foreshadowing such as, Laohu, the buffalo, the shark, and the title itself to develop Jack and his Mother’s relationship. Laohu, the tiger, is created to portray the emotions, Jack and his mother feel for each other at the beginning of
First of all, a menagerie is a strange collection of people or things. This collection of things are the animals which represent how Jack and his mother change throughout the story. In the beginning Jack accepts the menagerie. Mark has his Obi-Wan and Jack “didn’t have any toys accept his paper menagerie”(4), indicating that his feelings were on display. He wasn’t holding anything back even from his school house friend. Once the conflict with Mark escalates Jack, “packed the paper menagerie in a large shoebox and put it under the bed”(6), emphasizing his masking of his true feelings toward his culture. Eventually, Jack has to face his fear of accepting who he really is and not what the American society influences him to be. Lastly, “The paper menagerie, hidden in the uninsulated darkness of the attic for so long, had become brittle, and the bright wrapping paper had faded”(9), the menagerie resemble how Jack hides his feelings of fear, then finally they become weak and deteriorate making him able to continue onto better horizons. This paper menagerie is a symbol of Jack’s feelings that he keeps locked away from his