by Mobin Skaria

Created on: April 17, 2008

The short story Two Kinds, written by Amy Tan, has many symbolisms that a person can easily miss on the first or second time of reading it thru. For example, the first time I read the last part "I realized that both songs where part of one song", at first I thought that it just meant the music. But after I read it over to myself 2 more times, I saw that it also had a relation between her and her mother. How does the quote "I also learned I could be lazy and get away with mistakes, lots of mistakes" relate to its theme? I thought of several reasons.

One of many themes that I saw in the text was that looks can be deceiving (or different from reality). Jing-mei fools her piano teacher into thinking that she is playing things right. She probably started of by playing somewhat defiantly, and gradually took advantage of her piano teacher's deafness. In the process of deceiving the piano teacher, she also deceives her mother. Jing-mei's mom works hard to give Jing-mei an education. This relates to the quote because Jing-mei does literally get away with mistakes, but it might also mean that she started slacking in her academics. Laziness most of the time only starts getting bigger. It's hard to break a habit that you're used to.

Many themes can be found throughout this story. Another one that I found was you can be your own enemy. If she had stopped herself from trying to be lazy and tried to do the work, she could have been one of the leading pianist, and maybe even a prodigy. It was perfectly fine that she didn't want to be someone she didn't want to be, but the way she showed that was what happened wrong. Jing-mei's mom only did what any other mother would do, by trying to give the best for her. Apparently Jing-mei was under a lot of stress especially for one without much age. Her irresponsibility is shown up when she does the talent show and completely blows it. It is shown that her parents had done a bit of bragging about her daughter's music skills, which only adds to their humiliation. Even after that, her mom does not give up hope, she keeps trying.

Jing-mei does make mistakes, a lot of mistakes.

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