Literary Devices Found in Two Kinds
Nefertari Sandoval. 08/24/12
Setting
The setting of this story is San Francisco Chinatown, in a street named Sacramento, in the year 1949. They moved there after her mother lost everything in China
Characters
Jing-mei a Chinese immigrant teenager girl who argues with her mother constanly. Her mother is always getting mad at her and she is always dissapointed because she wants her daughter to be a prodogy.
Plot
Jing-mei's mother wants her to be a prodogy so she decides to put her in Piano class. Jing-mei starts lessons from Old Chong, a deaf man that used to play piano. Her mother starts brags about it with a lot of people, so one day everyone is the neiborhood decided to have a talent show. Her mother decides to put her in it. When the day finally came Jing-mei felt so confident and she believed she was going to do a good job, but when it was finally her turn, everything went wrong for her. After her performance was over her mother was very dissapointed she did not talked to her for a while, but a few days later they both finally spoke about it and they argued. After that they decided not to speak of it again. A few years later jing-mei's mother decided to give her her old piano for her birthday. Then years later Jing-mei never went to college she moved out and she never really did anything with her life. After that her mother died. Jing-mei decided to play the piano again.
Internal Conflict
The internal conflict is how both the mother and daughter feel about their problems with each other. Her mother wants her to be a prodogy and the daughter is always dissapointing her because she cant be what her mother wants her to be.
External Conflict
The external conflict is when Jing-mei and her mother have a really big argument because Jing-mei doesnt want to play piano anymore.
Theme
Jing-mei never became what her mother wanted her to be. She never really did nothing in her life. Her mother died years later. Jing-mei tried out playing the piano again. The theme can be,"You can't make everyone happy". Why pretend to be someone you are not? or to be someone you don't want to be. People must accept you the way you are, and if they really care and love you they wouldn't try to change you to someone they want. Go after your dreams, accomplish your goals even if it hurts some people it doesn't matter, what matters is for you to be happy and live life the way you want to live it.
Symbolism
The piano symbolizes the mother and daughter. It represent an apology, because they never really apologized to each other.
When she looks at herself in the mirror she doesn't see herself, she sees a disappointment, someone that is worthless, she feels like a nobody. "2 kinds", is the tittle of this story and it means Jing-mei has to be two different kinds of people because of her mother.
The thing that cause a lot of problems between the mother and daughter is that, her mother could not accept her own daughter, she did not like who her daughter was. She wanted her to do something with her life, but she wanted her to do it her way. Jing-mei could not do that for her mother
Her mother struggled a lot in China. She lived a hard and sad life, so maybe thats why she was always pushing her daughter to do something, because she just wanted the best for her.