The short story A Pair of Tickets by Amy Tan is narrated in the first person by a 36 year old woman named June May. The family of June May immigrated to the country and settled in San Francisco, California. Recently her mother has, unfortunately, passed away. She then sets out on a journey to find her true roots and comprehend her cultural identity. Also to meet a few family members, including her twin half-sisters, whom she had never met.
Suyuan, her mother, departed China during World War II and left her twin daughters behind. Suyuan had walked herself to fatigue, causing her to feel symptoms of dysentery in her stomach. She knew she couldn't witness the twins perish alongside her on the side of the road. She implored other passing immigrants to accept her baby, but was unsuccessful. Eventually, she ripped up the inside of her gown, where she had hidden her mother's ancient treasures, and tucked the jewelry into one baby's shirt while sliding money beneath the other's. She pulled out photos of her family and herself, scribbled the names of the twins on the backs, and asked the rescuer to take care of the infants with the valuable items supplied and deliver them to her address in Shanghai once it was safe to do so. Tragically, the twins' discovery family were unable to decipher the address. Suyuan wrote to friends in China for years in an effort to track
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For example, at the beginning of the story it says,“The landscape has become gray, filled with low flat cement buildings, old factories, and then tracks and more tracks filled with trains like ours passing by in the opposite direction”(Tan 736). In the concluding sentences it says,” The gray-green surface changes to the bright colors of our three images, sharpening and deepening all at once” (Tan 736). These colors instantly set a tone and mood. In the opening of the story it was viewed as danger and fear. To later to growth and
Throughout her childhood life her mother, Suyuan, was continuously pushing her to be her best. Jing-Mei purposely tried to fail at everything to prover to her mother that she could never become a great and famous person. Then after a piano recital that went horridly wrong, her and her mother had an argument and their relationship was never the same. Many years later Suyuan tried to give Jing-mei the piano that she had as a child. She refused the offer, but than a year later her mother died and Jing-Mei was cleaning out her mother’s house and decided to play the piano and she was surprised that she still knew how.
In the story Richard Connell uses imagery to describe the setting. ¨Jagged crags appeared to jut into the opaqueness.¨(Connell, 218) Throughout his writing he includes descriptions that make the reader imagine what the feelings that the characters have are. He says ¨It's like moist black velvet¨(Connell, 215) The imagery that he uses brings the reader into the story and connects them to the setting and describes and appeals to their senses in a way that makes the feel as though they are there.
The author does so by having the setting and the events starkly contrast one another and the earliest example is in the very beginning. To start the story, the passage opens with the description of the desert stating, “Light was thinning; the scrub’s dry savory odors were sweet on the cooler air.” The story starting off with such a relaxing scenery makes it is surprising when the events following the description contrast it, which are the man coming across the deadly snake and killing it. From the details in the beginning, the readers get a background to imagine that can intensify the violent actions occurring and can strengthen any accompanying feelings. Additionally, the detail of the “close green guardian-ship of the paper-bag bush” also serves as an important aspect of the setting to produce emotional effects.
Another example of how color is utilized in the novel, would be when the speaker starts describing Kansas. To emphasis the dramatic change
When Jin is upset on his way to his new home, he is comforted by an old Chinese parable making him feel closer to his mother. Jin is sitting in the back of his car with a tear running down his face (Yang 23). His mother tells him the story of a Chinese boy whose mother makes him move often but in each place new place he stays he can learn new skills in order to adapt to the environment (24). With the use of their culture, she is able to alleviate his worries about moving. It proves to him that no matter where he goes there are always ways to fit in.
He told China this when he first discovered that she was pregnant and he harbored these feeling throughout the full nine months of pregnancy. He constantly thought about how he would not have a life, could not be a freshman in college, how he would not be a free man. His entire life had gone down the drain as soon as the China’s pregnancy
Like a widow, Du Shiniang’s suicide could be considered as a decision made out of dedication. Though she was not dead, Scholar Li’s decision to sell her could be interpreted as her becoming a widow and as a result she chose to follow her husband to the grave (Chuanmen 54). Although both Xiao-yu and Du Shiniang suffered terrible ends by following their qings, they became models of moral virtue (Hsu 56). For example, Xiao-yu remains faithful to Li Yi even after discovering that he had become married (Hsu 63).
Suyuan’s American Dream starts in her heart when she decides to escape from the chaotic China and find a better life by immigrating to America. However, she loses her two babies on the way to Chungking. American Dream means different things for different people. Suyuan has fulfilled her American Dream in a certain degree by trying to provide her daughters with successful, blissful and better lives. First of all, Suyuan left Kweilin for Chungking in order to find her husband and avoid the Japanese.
one of the many times he uses imagery throughout this story is when the narrator says, “on his way he would see the cottages and homes with their dark windows, and it was not unequal to walking through a graveyard where only the faintest glimmers of firefly light appeared in flickers behind the windows” (Pg 1). By using imagery to compare walking through the neighborhood as walking through a graveyard shows that it is completely silent and there is no activity in any of the houses. Most people wouldn't describe their neighborhood as a graveyard, this also develops the mood. Another time he uses imagery is when the narrator says, “The street was silent and long and empty, with only his shadow moving like the shadow of a hawk in mid-country” (1). This shows mood because the narrator describes him as a hawk in mid-country, that means that he is all alone in what he feels to be like a barren or abandoned place.
Yes, I think that TicketMaster is a monopoly. They have integrated both vertically and horizontally, and have a very big majority of control in the ticket selling business. It is close to impossible to compete with Ticketmaster, and very unlikely to succeed in an attempt to join the ticket selling business. In 1993, a co-founder of Microsoft, Paul Allen, invested in 80% of the company.
Character Analysis When thinking of families most of the time its people you grew up with, and the culture you grew around. The story " A Pair of Tickets" () draws on what family and culture do to family 's and more importantly one person. June grows up in America where the culture to her is more familiar than that of her Chinese parents. While growing up she thought countless of times that the ways of her mother where strange and embarrassing, and at time she didn’t think of herself as truly to her heritage. Throughout the story June goes through different stages of grief, and finding herself when she truly thought she wasn’t a part of a culture.
Aunt Lindo signs the letter as her mother, making the twins believe that their mother is still alive. Jing-Mei arrives on a boat, and meets
In the words of Jing-Mei in the last line of the story, “Together we look like our mother. Her same eyes, her same mouth, open in surprise to see, at last, her long-cherished wish” (Tan 159). Throughout her life, Suyuan, their mother, held onto the hope that she would see her daughters again. In this hope, she named Jing-Mei in connection to her sisters, keeping the “long-cherished wish” that someday her daughters would reconcile and complete their family circle. The occasion that
but she is also nervous because she is going to meet her twin half-sisters, whom she has never met before and she will have to tell them about their mother’s death. Her mother had to abandon the half -sisters and her dream was to have a family reunion but before that could have happened she had passed away. Jing understood the language they were speaking but couldn’t speak it
Consequently, her nursemaid took her bloody clothes off while the family ate. While sitting on the edge of the boat, she fell off of the ship and into the water. She was rescued by some fishermen and given food. They tried to help her find her mother but she was nowhere to be found. The fishermen then drop Ying-Ying off at the shore, so that when her parents arrive they find her.