Amy Tan Two Kinds Summary

Story Analysis－Two Kinds

In the story “Two Kinds”, the author, Amy Tan, intends to make reader think of the meaning behind the story. She doesn’t speak out as an analyzer to illustrate what is the real problem between her and her mother. Instead, she uses her own point of view as a narrator to state what she has experienced and what she feels in her mind all along the story. She has not judged what is right or wrong based on her opinion. Instead of giving instruction of how to solve a family issue, the author chooses to write a narrative diary containing her true feeling toward events during her childhood, which offers reader not only a clear account, but insight on how the narrator feels frustrated due to failing her mother’s expectations
For example, she indicates that, “so maybe I never really gave myself a fair chance. I did pick up the basics pretty quickly, and I might have become a good pianist at that young age.” This gives the reader a regretful feeling for not attempting to learn. And also, she tells readers in the end of the story that she hasn’t even notice the song she used to play is incomplete, which not only lets the reader know she doesn’t concentrate on learning, but also is a symbol that she leaves her prodigy part of her unused. In contrast of her regretful message to readers, she gives several clues which function as excuse to those misunderstanding which the author has on her mother during her childhood. For example, she mentions in the beginning the hardship her mother has experienced back in China, which makes her mother “lay all of the hope” in America, more specifically, on the narrator herself. Also, it surprises the narrator that when she finds out her mother has no “accusations and blame” on her when she messes up the recital. This part reveals that her mother doesn’t blame her about the “disaster at the recital”, an event which makes her mother act as though she “lost everything”; instead of punishing the narrator, her mother still keep pushing her to learn piano after the recital, which is a sign that her mother doesn’t really only care for herself, but her daughter’s future. The author intends to contain part of her further understanding inside the story so that the reader will not feel it’s all about an accusation to her