Dialectical Journal Entries—The Bonesetter’s Daughter by Amy Tan
Passage:
“Years before, she had dreamed of writing stories as a way to escape. She could revise her life and become someone else. She could be somewhere else. In her imagination she could change everything, herself, her mother, her past. But the idea of revising her life also frightened her, as if by imagination alone she were condemning what did not like about herself or others. Writing what you wished was the most dangerous form of wishful thinking” (Tan 29).
Journal Entry:
(C) Ruth and I share a similar relationship with our family situations and our writing, primarily because we both have acutely unconventional family members. Hers is a mother who is preoccupied with …show more content…
In How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Foster supports this assertion with the idea that in order to convey their intent, authors use a combination of established figurative emblems and their own stylized imagery. While The Bonesetter’s Daughter is not overwhelmingly difficult to read, the face powder instance helps establish Tan’s “private system” (Foster 242) of fear- and death-related symbols that recur throughout the novel. From the treacherous cliff nicknamed “The End of the World” to Precious Auntie’s burned face, Tan architects a distinctive figurative scheme that starkly juxtaposes her characters’ innocuous, colloquial lives with the brutal ends that await them…and ultimately overtake them. Per Foster’s conceptions, Tan’s constant undertones of fearful destruction serve to instruct the reader on how to enter the calamitous world of the Young and Gu families, where superstition, misunderstood maternal love, and multilayered toxicity prevail. This world, much like the compact, is outwardly “benign,” but “bulging with toxins” that incurably haunt the family at every chance, lending the nuance and complication with which the prose itself, though markedly elegant, does not have at first …show more content…
The tone of the figurative language in this passage is unprecedentedly intense within her storyline. Her feelings of identity ambiguity, confused ambition, and longstanding perturbation are indubitably recurring and prevalent throughout the novel. However, the gunfire simile carries with it a brutality that seems out of place at this point in the plot. Prior to this passage, she finishes reading the translation of her mother’s account of her life, settles her mother’s housing, and reaches a point of harmony in her relationship with Art. These are all tangible indications that she and her family are on their way to all-inclusive peace. Ruth’s internal synthesis of her fledgling selfhood will not resolve itself nearly as easily as the physical emblems of her family’s problems, but this last passing reference to death and destruction counters the last chapter’s tone of hopeful, albeit subdued, resolution. It is a stark comparison even against the opening and concluding sentences of the passage, which communicate appropriately subtle reflection and aspiration, respectively. While Tan’s intent in employing the simile is clear, the conflict its connotation poses within the excerpt is
Passage:
“Years before, she had dreamed of writing stories as a way to escape. She could revise her life and become someone else. She could be somewhere else. In her imagination she could change everything, herself, her mother, her past. But the idea of revising her life also frightened her, as if by imagination alone she were condemning what did not like about herself or others. Writing what you wished was the most dangerous form of wishful thinking” (Tan 29).
Journal Entry:
(C) Ruth and I share a similar relationship with our family situations and our writing, primarily because we both have acutely unconventional family members. Hers is a mother who is preoccupied with …show more content…
In How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Foster supports this assertion with the idea that in order to convey their intent, authors use a combination of established figurative emblems and their own stylized imagery. While The Bonesetter’s Daughter is not overwhelmingly difficult to read, the face powder instance helps establish Tan’s “private system” (Foster 242) of fear- and death-related symbols that recur throughout the novel. From the treacherous cliff nicknamed “The End of the World” to Precious Auntie’s burned face, Tan architects a distinctive figurative scheme that starkly juxtaposes her characters’ innocuous, colloquial lives with the brutal ends that await them…and ultimately overtake them. Per Foster’s conceptions, Tan’s constant undertones of fearful destruction serve to instruct the reader on how to enter the calamitous world of the Young and Gu families, where superstition, misunderstood maternal love, and multilayered toxicity prevail. This world, much like the compact, is outwardly “benign,” but “bulging with toxins” that incurably haunt the family at every chance, lending the nuance and complication with which the prose itself, though markedly elegant, does not have at first …show more content…
The tone of the figurative language in this passage is unprecedentedly intense within her storyline. Her feelings of identity ambiguity, confused ambition, and longstanding perturbation are indubitably recurring and prevalent throughout the novel. However, the gunfire simile carries with it a brutality that seems out of place at this point in the plot. Prior to this passage, she finishes reading the translation of her mother’s account of her life, settles her mother’s housing, and reaches a point of harmony in her relationship with Art. These are all tangible indications that she and her family are on their way to all-inclusive peace. Ruth’s internal synthesis of her fledgling selfhood will not resolve itself nearly as easily as the physical emblems of her family’s problems, but this last passing reference to death and destruction counters the last chapter’s tone of hopeful, albeit subdued, resolution. It is a stark comparison even against the opening and concluding sentences of the passage, which communicate appropriately subtle reflection and aspiration, respectively. While Tan’s intent in employing the simile is clear, the conflict its connotation poses within the excerpt is