Paper Menagerie Characterization Essay The Paper Menagerie is a short story written by Ken Liu. This story is written from first point of view and it has a plot of a child named Jack becoming more mature through his mistakes made during his adolescence. Author Ken Liu uses characterization to demonstrate the universal truth of pain of our human need to belong. There are two important points the author made. The first Point is associated with Jack’s alienation, how he got excluded because of his looks and food. The second point connects to Jack’s mother’s experience of being an orphan, because her parents went missing. Ken Liu used Jack’s isolations to demonstrate the pain of our human need to belong. From the paragraph below from the text, …show more content…
'Sha Jiao chink?.’ ‘English', I said. 'Speak English.’ She tried. 'What happen?’ 'I pushed the chopsticks and the bowl before menagerie away: stir-fried green peppers with five-spice beef. ‘We should eat American food’” (69). In this quote Jack went to school with Americans and he figures out that he was different from his peers. He looked different; American students called Jack a chink and they made fun of Jack, so as his neighbour Mark. Another thing to mention from that paragraph is that Jack always wanted for his mother to cook American food because they were in America, in wanting to reject his Chinese culture. Last thing that one can infer from the quote is his mother’s language barrier. She always speak Chinese to Jack, in the quote his mother uses Chinese word such as “Sha jio chink?”. By saying this Chinese sentence in America, it taunted and made Jack embarrassed because Jack always thought he will not get accepted and his mother was one that is blocking his way to get recognized since, she made Jack different from peers. In the part of Jack rejects many things including the looks , talking to his mother in Chinese and rejects his culture. The toy that his mother made for …show more content…
Read this quote from the text. “There I was, a ten-year-old orphan.…six years I lived like this…She told me about American men who wanted Asian wives. If I can cook, clean, and take care of my American husband, he’ll give me a good life. It was the only hope I had. No one understood me, and I understood nothing But then you were born!”(75~76). In the quote the Jack’s mother mentions that she was 10 year old orphan for six years. Until she met her “American” husband which is Jack’s dad. Jack’s Dad could not understand her until the birth of Jack. Since she had no friend and the family, she felt more Lonely. This actually leads to other part of story, where she is going to Hong Kong see her brother, on the way however was forced to get adopted. She got force adopted to a family, where they treated her like if she wasn’t human, also she couldn’t see her brother again forever until she died. For her, Jack was the only family that she had, it break her heart when Jack tried to reject everything from his mother food, culture, paper menagerie and even talking to his mother. “can you understand how it felt when you stopped talking to me and won’t let me talk to you in Chinese? I felt I was losing everything all over again”(76). That is why she felt really lonely and possible reason for spreading the cancer on Jack’s mother’s body. That
Chapter six examines the anti-Chinese sentiment with the emerging class antagonism and turmoil between white capitalists and workers. The unwelcomed arrival of Chinese immigrants brought along their own social organizations such as the huiguan, fongs, and tongs. These types of social organizations secured areas of employment and housing for Chinese immigrants in California. This social structure that was unknown to Anglos led them to also categorize Chinese on the same level as Indians by depicting them as lustful heathens whom were out to taint innocent white women. These images were also perpetuated onto Chinese women, thus, also sexualizing them as all prostitutes.
Both of their parents died when they were younger. As an orphan, they had to let go of several foster parents. In the first chapter, Molly states year after year, she has been rejected over and over again and no one looked out for her well-being before her boyfriend Jack. Molly controls her emotions by imagining of an enormous box with chains
Jack also engages in fights with his best friend, which at first is truly disheartening and unfair from the reader’s perspective, is later sympathized with the knowledge and understanding that it is Jacks true best shot at gaining the approval of his abusive stepfather Dwight and protecting himself. Jacks life is driven with emotional neglect and constant abuse; Dwight being the largest cause. Jack is desperate to transform himself into the masculine and happy person he wants to be, a deluded image and way of thinking that he believes will solve all his problems and hardships. Readers eventually gain the knowledge that his lies and deceit are his way of achieving this and providing him with comfort and hope as well as relief and escpae from his currently tortuous youth. ‘I couldn’t help but try to introduce new versions of myself as my interests changed, and as other versions of myself failed to persuade.’
"The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet" by Jamie Ford is a captivating coming-of-age story that follows the life of Henry Lee, a Chinese-American boy growing up in Seattle during World War II. Throughout the novel, Henry experiences profound personal growth and self-discovery as he navigates the complexities of racial tensions, family expectations, and first love. This essay will explore how four quotes from the book exemplify the transformative journey of Henry's coming of age. Paragraph 1: In the early stages of the novel, a young Henry grapples with his dual identity as an American-born Chinese.
Living as a Chinese-American, the narrator had to take on American attributes in order to be accepted -- for example, while normal Chinese women spoke with strong and assertive voices, the narrator adopted a whisper in order to appear “American-feminine. ”(1) As a result, however, her shy demeanor caused her to be an unpopular outcast. She saw herself in another Chinese-American girl at her school, as they had certain, negative similarities. “I hated the younger sister, the quiet one.
Their lives contradicted Jack’s greatly because his conservative father often talked about how suffering was the key to being a good person. “ One thing I do know,” the Queen went on. “ To ignore the joy while it lasts, in favor of lamenting one’s fate one’s fate, is a great crime.” (349) Here he learned that bringing joy into someone’s life and keeping it bright in his own is the greatest
Another apparent case of alienation and isolation would be in regards to John “The Savage”. John himself is a victim of alienation not only by the World State but also by the Malpai Indian Reservation where he was raised. The Reservation shunned him because of the color of his skin and the fact that his mother, Linda, was provocative towards married men. Regardless of the hateful actions of the other reservation members, John was able to find solace in two things: Shakespeare’s writing and the stories Linda told to him as a child. Throughout John’s childhood Linda would tell stories about the wonderful times she had when she lived in the World State.
The world is made up of opposites and differences. In the novel paper towns by john green, the use of opposites helped me to understand the themes: appearance can be deceiving, the importance of identity and the bad affects of obsession this is shown through a variety of quotes in the text. A quote from the book that shows appearance can be deceiving is when Q is in Margo’s room looking for clues that link to where she is, he then finds her music collection and says “But I was distracted by Margo’s music collection. She liked everything I could have never imagined her listening to all these records.”
She felt devastated to leave Jack in the ocean, but it was what he
This quote shows that other people have heard about Jack’s loss of a job, but by him going to this interview, he is getting his life back on track. Jack had taken all the responsibility for his actions, and then he had moved on. Another example of Jack doing something that he may eventually regret is, “Your daddy… sometimes he does things he’s sorry for later. Sometimes he doesn’t think the way he should. That doesn’t happen very often, but sometimes it does.”
”14 Jack's history with his abusive father and his own problems causes him to become a danger. Hutz also states that the transformation of Jack shows how a “child victim” transforms “into the adult abuser. ”15This makes him a source of horror as it is a realistic, seemingly uncontrollable
Jack’s father had to stay in Gdynia for business and to take care of their house. After one day of travel jack and his family arrived in his grandfather’s town. Jack’s grandfather dressed all in black and spoke Yiddish. He was a very religious man and encouraged Jack to take part in Jewish activities. To please his grandfather Jack began to wear a small round skullcap.
Throughout the entire novel, the mothers and daughters face inner struggles, family conflict, and societal collision. The divergence of cultures produces tension and miscommunication, which effectively causes the collision of American morals, beliefs, and priorities with Chinese culture which
Her mother taught Jack a way the world functioned. Or well, the world because there was no world.
He seeks enlightenment, which would provide Jack with a foothold in the world. Jack doesn't know who he is at the most basic level. Jack reveals his internal sense of loss by stating, "the fact is Lady Bracknell, I said I had lost my parents. It would be nearer to the truth to say that my parents seem to have lost me." (Wilde 20).