Amy Tan's 'Rules Of The Game'

In the short story "Rules of the Game" by Amy Tan, a main theme is that staying quiet and holding back can help you to achieve goals, shown when Waverly's mother awards her, when she wins a chess game, and when Waverly accidentally blurts out something she regrets saying. At the beginning of the story when Waverly is a young girl, her mother drills a life lesson into her. She tells Waverly to “ ‘Bite back your tongue,’ scolded my mother when I cried loudly (...) ‘Wise guy, he not go against wind. In Chinese we say, Come from South, blow with wind- poom!- North will follow. Strongest wind cannot be seen.’ The next week I bit my tongue as we entered the store with the forbidden candies (...) she quietly plucked a small bag of plums from the rack and put it on the counter” (146). …show more content…
She teaches Waverly that if she stays quiet and patient, she will get what she wants. Waverly’s goal was for her mother to purchase that bag of sacred salted plums and achieves this when she bites back her tongue. Secondly, Waverly uses this biting back her tongue or ‘invisible silence’ to win a chess game where she struggles at the start. As Waverly begins to play, ".... the boy disappeared, the color ran out of the room, and I saw only my white pieces and his black ones (...) A light wind began blowing past my ears. It whispered secrets only I could hear. (...) 'The wind leaves no trail.' " (152-153). Waverly is very stealthy and doesn’t give anything away that would potentially cost her the game, such as saying something the boy can hear or acting nervous and