Have you ever felt that you had to choose between your own culture or the american culture? This is understanding since many people go through this one point in their lives when
They are trying to fit in or they just don’t like where they came from. In Ken Liu’s “The Paper Menagerie” the main character, Jack, experiences trying to fit in at school. By that, he had to choose between his chinese culture or the all american life. This only happened because Mark called his paper menagerie “chinese garbage”. Jack goes through a cultural identity crisis that causes him to lose his chinese culture and forget who he really is. When Jack moved to a new area, he met Mark. Mark was showing off his star wars toy and Jack wasn’t impressed. On page 68, Jack introduced Laohu, the tiger, to Mark and he said, “That doesn’t look like a tiger at all. Your mom makes toys for you from trash?” This shows that Mark made Jack realized that his paper menagerie was just trash and “really just a piece of wrapping paper.” …show more content…
After reading, “The Paper Menagerie”, I think Ken Liu is trying to make me be sympathetic and critical of Jack due to his conflict because I understand what he’s going through and how he might’ve felt during his identity crisis. I’ve gone through it too by hiding parts of where I came from but I learned to embrace them and not care about what people think of me. My parents embarrass me but I know that they’re trying to express their love for me. I think the author is trying to make me feel critical too because I felt so angry about how he just shun his mom out of his life and made me judge his character. I also didn’t like how Jack didn’t appreciate what his mother is doing for him. Being different is a good thing because you won’t have to be the same as others. The theme is to never take good things in life for granted because you’ll never know when those things will be
They are trying to fit in or they just don’t like where they came from. In Ken Liu’s “The Paper Menagerie” the main character, Jack, experiences trying to fit in at school. By that, he had to choose between his chinese culture or the all american life. This only happened because Mark called his paper menagerie “chinese garbage”. Jack goes through a cultural identity crisis that causes him to lose his chinese culture and forget who he really is. When Jack moved to a new area, he met Mark. Mark was showing off his star wars toy and Jack wasn’t impressed. On page 68, Jack introduced Laohu, the tiger, to Mark and he said, “That doesn’t look like a tiger at all. Your mom makes toys for you from trash?” This shows that Mark made Jack realized that his paper menagerie was just trash and “really just a piece of wrapping paper.” …show more content…
After reading, “The Paper Menagerie”, I think Ken Liu is trying to make me be sympathetic and critical of Jack due to his conflict because I understand what he’s going through and how he might’ve felt during his identity crisis. I’ve gone through it too by hiding parts of where I came from but I learned to embrace them and not care about what people think of me. My parents embarrass me but I know that they’re trying to express their love for me. I think the author is trying to make me feel critical too because I felt so angry about how he just shun his mom out of his life and made me judge his character. I also didn’t like how Jack didn’t appreciate what his mother is doing for him. Being different is a good thing because you won’t have to be the same as others. The theme is to never take good things in life for granted because you’ll never know when those things will be