The Open Boat

A biographical styled story includes bits and pieces of an author's personal life.
Personal life experiences, personal facts, relationships, and so on. Characters and themes of the story portray part of the author's life events and gives the reader an insight of the history of the author. The short stories “A Pair of Tickets,” “The Open Boat,” and “The Yellow Wallpaper”, all revolve around characters who mirror their authors. Amy Tan's “ A Pair of Tickets” begins with the main character (Jing- Mei) on her way to China to fulfill her mother's dream. As the train enters Shenzhen, China, Jing Mei beings to “feel the skin on my forehead tingling, my blood rushing through a new course, my bones aching with a familiar old pain” (179) describing
Instead she writes them a letter telling them her family was going to come visit them in China and signed the mother's name. After this is done, Jing-Mei realizes she will have to be the one to tell her sisters their mother has died. The train pulls into the station and the visitors are met by Jing-Mei's great aunt. The reunion is emotional and other family members join in. The author Amy Tan struggles with her own culture identity just as the main character in her short story. The short story tile “A Pair of Tickets” symbolizes a trip or adventure, but the reader finds out she is indeed on a journey to finding herself. In Amy Tan's interview with the Academy of Achievement, she states that most of her issues growing up were both cultural and generational. Tan now realizes that “some of the stuff that happened to me was simply the uniqueness of my family and my mother” (“Amy Tan Interview” 5). The connection between the short story and the author is heavily similar and clearly heavily impacted by her mother. Amy Tan's own trip to China was based on the sole purpose of fulfilling a promise, just as Jing-Mei. This was her chance to explore her mother's past. Tan wanted to see where she lived, meet the family members who raised her, and meet the daughters she had left behind. Traveling to China was Tan’s turning point in life, causing her to write “A Pair of
Gilman became overwhelmingly depressed and began treatment with Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell, a well-known physician who favored the “rest cure” for the treatment of nervous disorders. Gilman describes her treatment: “I was put to bed, and kept there. I was fed, bathed, rubbed, and responded with the vigorous body of twenty-six. As far as he could see there was nothing the matter with me, so after a month of this agreeable treatment he sent me home” (Stiles). Although Gilman attempted to abide by Mitchell’s prescriptions, she was unable to tolerate the treatment for more than a few months. Gilman later satirized the treatment in “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Her main purpose was not to ridicule the only the treatment but also the sexual politics that made such a treatment possible. The relationship between the narrator and John symbolizes the gender inequity going on in society. John calls her his “little girl, referring to her in a childlike manner, and overrides or dismisses any of her opinions. He makes her live in house that she does not like, in a room that she hates, making her feel lonely and unhappy. He confines her to a nursery hoping she would recover in health with the “perfect rest”. Despite all the cruel treatment going on the narrator triumphs over John. She literally crawls over him and escapes from him, only