Literary Analysis of "A Pair of Tickets
Literary Analysis of A pair of Tickets In Amy Tan’s, A Pair of Tickets, Tan uses a change in setting paralleled to a change in character to reveal that when a person learns something new, whether it be about a culture or another person, it changes the way they think and accept the world around them. Jing-Mei is a 36 year old woman of Chinese decent. She grew up in America in San Francisco and has never known what it is to be Chinese. She has denied any kinship to the culture and it has a lot to do with the relationship she had with her now departed mother. Her mother believed that “Once you are born Chinese, you cannot help but feel and think Chinese (189). She told Jing-Mei, “Someday you will see, it’s in your blood waiting to be let go.” (189) Jing-Mei does not understand what her mother meant.
I saw myself transforming like a werewolf, a mutant tag of DNA suddenly triggered, replicating itself insidiously into a syndrome, a cluster of telltale Chinese behaviors, all those things my mother did to embarrass me-haggling with store owners, pecking her mouth with a toothpick in public, being color-blind to the fact that lemon yellow and pale pink are not good combinations for winter. (189)
Jing-Mei’s perception of what it is to be Chinese is isolated to the things she saw her mother do. She has never been submerged in the Chinese culture and does not understand how she could become Chinese.
More importantly, she does not understand the true desire of her mother’s heart in reuniting with her long lost twin half-sisters from her mother’s previous marriage. She believes in her heart that “their mother “and her mother are two different people. (191) Jing-Mei has repressed feelings of inadequacy. She feels that she was less loved then her twin sisters because throughout her mother’s life, she was always in search of them. “All the times when she got mad at me, was she really thinking about them? Did she wish I were they? Did she regret that I wasn’t?” (197)
I saw myself transforming like a werewolf, a mutant tag of DNA suddenly triggered, replicating itself insidiously into a syndrome, a cluster of telltale Chinese behaviors, all those things my mother did to embarrass me-haggling with store owners, pecking her mouth with a toothpick in public, being color-blind to the fact that lemon yellow and pale pink are not good combinations for winter. (189)
Jing-Mei’s perception of what it is to be Chinese is isolated to the things she saw her mother do. She has never been submerged in the Chinese culture and does not understand how she could become Chinese.
More importantly, she does not understand the true desire of her mother’s heart in reuniting with her long lost twin half-sisters from her mother’s previous marriage. She believes in her heart that “their mother “and her mother are two different people. (191) Jing-Mei has repressed feelings of inadequacy. She feels that she was less loved then her twin sisters because throughout her mother’s life, she was always in search of them. “All the times when she got mad at me, was she really thinking about them? Did she wish I were they? Did she regret that I wasn’t?” (197)
Cited: Neifert, Marianne E. “Family Quotes: Quotations about Family”. Notable Quotes. 17 Oct 2013 Tan, Amy. “A Pair of Tickets.” The Norton Introduction to Literature. Ed. Allison Booth and Kelly J. Mays. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2011. 189-205. Print.