The Reflection Of Language In Mother Tongue By Amy Tan

She acts in a caring manner to everyone’s face, but when she is alone, she becomes a heartless woman, determined to reveal what she knows. Miss Strangeworth is the one causing the distress in her community, yet she acts oblivious as to what is bothering everyone. She shows her extreme deceitfulness by attempting to ease Helen Crane’s concern about her child by saying “Nonsense… some of them develop… more quickly than others” (Jackson, 1941, p. 167). This is deceitful because she is aware that there is something different about the child and instead of voicing that, she consoles the mother, only to subsequently shatter her in an anonymous letter. Additionally, Miss Strangeworth cleverly utilizes the most common paper and envelops all townspeople use for her letters.

Connie in Joyce Carol Oates’s story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” desperately wants to be independent from her family, while Gregor Samsa in Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” pathetically yearns for inclusion. In this story, Oates pays special attention to the mother-daughter relationship and the lack of meaningful communication between them. Connie's mother is an image of the future Connie doesn't want – the life of a domestic housewife. Connie has a love-hate relationship with her mother, with whom she identifies, but at the same time she has to distance herself from her mother in order to establish her independence. On the other hand, The Metamorphosis, a story by Franz Kafka, is about a man who has been transformed into a giant beetle

Which Jeannette later found out was because her mom refused to sell their land. By making this choice she hurt her kids by making them live with poverty and starvation. Secondly, Jeannette’s mom didn’t believe in many things, including glasses. Jeannette explains, “She didn’t approve of glasses. If you had weak eyes, Mom believed they needed exercise to get strong.

A mother and daughter are expected to always get along, and a daughter is expected to always respect her mother. Anne Frank and her mother, Edith, have a very complicated relationship. At times, Anne and her mother do not have the expected relationship, and their reality is that Anne sometimes disrespects and does not get along with her mother. Anne acknowledges their relationship when she says, “I simply can’t stand Mother, and I have to force myself not to snap at her all the time and to stay calm when I’d rather slap her across the face. I don’t know why I’ve taken such a terrible dislike to her” (Frank 51).

She also refers to her family as “normal”, but fails to do this for herself in order to strengthen how misplaced she feels in comparison to them. While touching on the stark contrast of Sebold’s presence compared to those around her, she also highlights the obvious lack of understanding and empathy her peers carry for her situation. After she is visited by a neighbor, Sebold recounts, “At one point she said, ‘What happened to me is nothing like what happened to you. You’re young and beautiful. No one’s interested in me that way.’” (68).

But, in literature and especially short stories, symbolism is widely used and an idea as practical as, ‘because her mother is transphobic’ would not work because of the words in the quote such as, “vanishing” and “like they never existed” are perfectly in one sentence along with both words relating to invisibility. This does not add up to ‘because her mother is transphobic’. Then, in Save the I-Hotel, opposition could argue that the quote,“Nobody knows you here, just the work you do, just the color of your face” is just a practical implication that Filipino workers simply feel underappreciated by their bosses. Nevertheless, the author cleverly uses words since all of the parts of the sentence perfectly align with each other. The quote, “Nobody knows you here, just the work you do, just the color of your face” has words that represent a tool: “just the work you do, just the color of your face” talk about the characteristics of how we see a tool, which are seeing if the tools works and rusty color of the tool.

The personal narrative of this story is told through the major character, Maxine Hong Kingston. She is reflecting back on her childhood which establishes some credibility. Throughout the passage, readers see that Kingston repeatedly blames her mother for her speaking difficulties when all her mother wanted was for Kingston to be able to speak multiple languages freely without being “tongue tied.” The accusations that Kingston repeatedly places on her mother are ironic because while Kingston is writing about how she is unable to communicate, readers see that she is very capable of expressing herself through her

Maybe she was worried what she’d do with the information. Maybe the memory of what happened to Hannah’s aunt was to painful to bring up. Regardless of the reason, the effect of her inaction remains the same. Between Hannah and her mother was a gap of information crucial to understanding the mother’s feelings for her daughter. Because she didn’t fill that gap, an even wider emotional gap grew between them.

Racial stigmas and stereotypes have negative effects on a multitude of ethnic groups. Across our nation, members of numerous races experience difficulties surrounding their identity and inability to refine their English dialects. Anna Marie Quindlen, an American author, journalist, and New York Times columnist, once said, “Ethnic stereotypes are misshapen pearls, sometimes with a sandy grain of truth at their center...but they ignore complexity, change, and individuality”. Quindlen’s viewpoint is skillfully displayed in “Mother Tongue”, a first person narration by an Asian-American woman, Amy Tan. The obstacles she encountered based on her mother’s struggle with English significantly affected their identities in our society.

All throughout Lynn’s life, all her doctors and teachers had said that learning sign language would hurt her ability to learn to speak. The scare it puts on the parents who have never even had a conversation with their child that didn’t involve a picture book for them to point at. I can’t imagine how difficult it was for Lynn’s parents, you never know why Lynn was mad or upset or why she was happy or excited. Lynn had no way of communicating her feelings to her parents. This was all because of the advice against learning and using sign language.