Preview

Two Kinds

Better Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1184 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Two Kinds
Two Kinds by Amy Tan: Literary Analysis - There are many key elements which together make up a story, namely a story's setting, its main characters, the plot, and the symbolism it contains. A story's setting is usually described in the beginning of the story, giving an explanation of where and when the story is taking place. Many stories have a protagonist and an antagonist as well as other key characters. The protagonist is the "hero or antihero; (the) character you tend to 'root for'." . The antagonist opposes the protagonist, usually creating some sort of conflict within the story. The plot of a story is the way the events play out in the story. Along with these elements, there is usually some sort of symbolism within the story. Symbols occur in most stories, not always in the form of an item. Symbolism can also be demonstrated in words, colors, or anything that seems to represent a deeper meaning. The story "Two Kinds" by Amy Tan demonstrates all of the elements mentioned above.
Setting and Characters
The story's main events take place in Chinatown throughout the 1950s and perhaps early 1960s. The main character of the story, who is also the protagonist, is the author herself: Amy Tan. The antagonist happens to be her own mother, who is always pushing Amy to discover some hidden talent and be someone she is not. There are a few other minor characters in the story. There is Lindo Jong (who she calls Auntie Lindo), who is a close friend of Amy's mother. Waverly Jong is Auntie Lindo's daughter, who is close to Amy's age. Amy's piano instructor, who she dubs "Old Chong", plays a small role in the story. Amy's dad is included in the text, but does not play much of a role.
Plot
The plot of a story has six key parts that are normally sequential. A story begins with an exposition, and follows with rising action. Next is some sort of conflict which usually results into the climax of the story. Climax can be defined as "a moment of great or culminating intensity in a

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Powerful Essays

    Typically, a novel contains four basic parts: a beginning, middle, climax, and the end. The beginning sets the tone for the book and introduces the reader to the characters and the setting. The majority of the novel comes from middle where the plot takes place. The plot is what usually captures the reader’s attention and allows the reader to become…

    • 1247 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    What is the climax of the story? (note: the climax is the most exciting and emotional point of a story; it usually occurs near the end)…

    • 2363 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    5.03 Faulkner

    • 286 Words
    • 2 Pages

    5.What is the climax A decisive moment that is of maximum intensity or is a major turning point in a plot. of the story? Explain your answer.…

    • 286 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    As its complex structure suggests, the book tries to organize the the stories of mother and daughter with the intention of reaching the same destination: the daughter's recovery of her cultural and ethnic identity as Chinese by overcoming the generational gap and the cultural differences between herself and her mother. The mother intend to hand over their "good intentions" and "usable past" in China to their daughter in America. Amy Tan, depicts the relationship between Jing-mei, a young Chinese-American girl, and her mother, a Chinese immigrant, her mother. She does not have something special things. However, her normal life has changed a little because of her mother.…

    • 827 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    One of the crucial components of Amy Tan's "Two Kinds" is her choice of narrator. This narrative voice develops the story by adding to the characters. By using this narrator, Amy Tan allows the story to come alive through the eyes of a child. Jing-Mei, who is the daughter of a Chinese immigrant, paints the picture of her relationship between herself and her overbearing mother. Being the protagonist of the story, Jing-Mei is able to portray what she is going through as the storyteller. This choice of first person narrative allows the audience to look through the eyes of a young Chinese-American girl and take part in her coming of age. If the author chose another character as narrator, the childlike characteristics and personality would have been lost.…

    • 746 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Two Kinds Paper Amy Tan

    • 912 Words
    • 4 Pages

    In Amy Tan’s short story “Two Kinds” Jing-Mei, the story’s main character, takes a stand against her mother. The story opens as she describes her childhood, which was full of pain and resentment caused by never becoming the “prodigy” that her mother desperately wanted her to be. Despite her best intentions, Jing-Mei always fell short of her mother’s expectations and one night, she made a pact to herself that she would never allow her mother to try to change her. After her mother saw a young Chinese girl play the piano on a television show she decided that Jing-Mei should take lessons from the neighbor. The neighbor, Mr. Chong, Jing-Mei discovered was deaf, and that she easily could get away with playing the wrong notes. Months later, Mr. Chong and her mother entered Jing-Mei in a talent contest. She believed that her inner prodigy would surface and allow her to play well, but the performance proved to be an utter disaster. Two days later, while being urged to go to practice an argument of devastating proportions began. Her mother never spoke of piano lessons ever again. Decades later, she received the family’s piano as a present for her thirtieth birthday. Months after her mother’s death, she plays it and realizes the truth about her mother’s intentions. The central idea in Tan’s story is, parents cannot control or dictate their children’s lives but only try to guide them in the right direction.…

    • 912 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Essay1234

    • 351 Words
    • 2 Pages

    1. there are five parts of a story ( exposition , rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution.)…

    • 351 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The protagonist in Two kinds is a young Chinese girl named Ni Kan. Ni Kan's mother is an immigrant from China that wants more than any thing for her daughter to be a prodigy. She believes that in America, her daughter can be a child star. So she tests her, and finds out what other extraordinary kids her age can do, and tries to see if her daughter can also do these things. Then one day she decides that her daughter could be an excellent pianist. So she finds a teacher and sets her daughter up for piano lessons. Her daughter does not like the lessons or the tests so she decides to rebel against her mother and start failing the tests on purpose. She proceeds to fail on purpose for the rest of her life and in the end she realizes the irony of her situation in a song that she tried to play for a talent show when she was a child. The song is important because its two parts are "Pleading Child" and "Perfectly Contented" which represent the change in thinking between an adult and a child.…

    • 482 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    4 for Two

    • 353 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Climax - the turning point of the action in the plot of a play or story. The climax represents the point of greatest tension in the work.…

    • 353 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Two Kinds

    • 822 Words
    • 4 Pages

    In the short story “Two Kinds”, Amy Tan uses the narrator’s point of view to share a mother's attempt to control her daughter's dreams and ambitions. Tan`s short story is an example of how differing personalities cause struggles between a parent and child. Children often fall victim to a parent trying too hard or expectations being too high, and in the case of "Two Kinds," we see Jing Mei’s mother trying to live her life through that of Jing Mei. The outcome of her mother’s actions soon leads the narrator into feeling tension within herself, and between herself and her mother.…

    • 822 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Two Kinds

    • 742 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Cited: Tan, Amy. “Two Kinds.” The Story and Its Writer. Ed. Ann Charters. 7th ed.…

    • 742 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    A Pair of Tickets Essay

    • 1427 Words
    • 6 Pages

    The story takes place in china. The setting of this story is very important as it all revolts around the Chinese culture. One as a reader can be able to place oneself in the same situation and experience the feelings that are being presented in this story. The story is being told from a first person point of view. The narrator is Jing-Mei “June May” Woo. She is the 36-year old American born daughter of Suyuan a women who made the big decision which was to abandoned her twins, however she did it for love because at the time she thought she was going to die. June May is the one telling the story. We only know what the narrator thinks. We can only make inferences about the rest of the characters in the story by the way they behave. The narrator embarks an adventurous journey. Along the way she learns many things about her real roots she discovers things that she never knew before.…

    • 1427 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Two Kinds

    • 1253 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Tan, Amy. "Two Kinds." Literature: A Portable Anthology. Ed. Janet E. Gardner, et. Al. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin 's, 2004. 405-414…

    • 1253 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    When reading fiction, the reader need to analyze the text to understand what you are reading. This first thing the reader needs to know is the setting, that is the time and place where the story takes place. We reading the texts, the reader need to finds out characters and how they developed. In a story of fiction there is always a point of view, and that's how the story is told. In each story is a conflicts in which the character goes though. While reading the story will start developing a plot, which includes the events that make the story, and the climax in the end the story that is the main event, and the resolution is how the characters solve the climax. Then the author uses literary devices to tell and describe the story called metaphor, personification, imagery, simile, flashback, and foreshadowing. That’s how reader reads fiction to understand what the author had writing.…

    • 709 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    elements of a short story

    • 346 Words
    • 2 Pages

    -it is the sequence or flow of the events in a short story that would help develop the author's idea. There are five elements of plot structure-- introduction, rising action, climax, falling action, and denouement.…

    • 346 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays