The Taste Of Apples By Hun-Ming Analysis

In the short story The Taste of Apples, Huang Chun-ming uses the experience of the Jiang family’s first time tasting an apple to symbolize the invasion of American culture in Taiwan. Huang portrays the invasion of American culture throughout the story by comparing and contrasting food, values and beliefs of the Jiang family and those of the Americans. Even with Jiang Ah-fa, the head of the Jiang family in the hospital with both of his legs broken after getting hit by a well-off American driver, the family finds satisfaction with the food, service and money brought upon them by the American, and by the end of the story, they were becoming more and more Americanized.
The story opens up with the scene of the car accident, placing great emphasis on comparing the possessions of the two men involved. The green sedan that had belonged to the American had crashed into the old bicycle that had belonged to Ah-fa “like a wild animal pouncing on its prey” (135). The
While the scene was brief, the question “‘Do you believe in God?’” proposed by the nurse to Ah-gui was indicative of how prevalent American culture was in Taiwan (152). While there was no strong indications of wanting to convert the Jiang family, the nurse’s statement that “‘There are blessings for those who believe’” serves as a kind of advertisement with the intentions of changing the Jiang family’s beliefs and values. In some ways, it can be interpreted that the Jiang family was a believer in God because when Ah-fa learns that the American driver had decided to assume full responsibility for the family financially, he views the incident as some sort of luck instead of a tragedy. The twenty thousand dollars that had been given to the Jiang family along with the offer to send the mute child off to a special school in the United States was in a way, a blessing to