Two Kinds By Amy Tan Essay

Amy Tan's "Two Kinds", is a story that attempts to illustrate the pressure placed upon many young children to achieve success in life. Leading a successful life is an expectation that many Americans and immigrants alike share for their children, making it easy for the children of said parents to feel the immense weight of such hopes. Such hopes and dreams felt even more so by immigrant's children, bowing under the pressure of their parent's lofty aspirations, as in the of Jing-mei and her mother in Tan's story. Tan's story begins with a Chinese mother, with big dreams for her young daughter, dreams that entailed Jing-Mei, her daughter, becoming a child prodigy. Jing-mei's mother attempts almost anything to achieve her daughter's success, from training her daughter for Hollywood stardom, to quizzing Jing-mei in hopes of presenting her daughter as a child genius. However, after witnessing Jing-Mei's tragic piano performance at a community talent show, Jing Mei's mother seemed to lose all hope. Despite the lost hope of …show more content…
The narrator is the adult woman Jing-Mei who looks back upon her life and the incidents that shaped her future, lending a discerning and insightful adult eye to the young character. There is also a rather manipulative side to Jing-Mei that Tan illustrates in the scene of Jing-Mei's piano lesson. Jing-Mei early on discovers that her instructor, Old Chong, had weak eyes and was unable to see clearly. Upon discovering this, Jing-Mei recounts, "I could be lazy and get away with mistakes, lots of mistakes." The main force opposing Jing-Mei is her mother, the antagonist. She is a traditional Chinese woman who tries to instill her beliefs in her young daughter, as well as the dream that Jing-Mei could become a successful child star. Tan uses Jing-Mei's mother to help create the physical conflict of children failing to live up to their parent's