Knowledge and Heritage Essay

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Abstract Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” and Amy Tan’s “A Pair of Tickets” investigate the relationships between female parents and girls. Both authors show a battle. by the kids. to understand the true significance of heritage. Each narrative has a specific type of mother-daughter relationship. Mother and Daughter Conflict: The Struggle to Understand Heritage in First-generation Americans A cardinal factor in Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use. ” and Amy Tan’s “A Pair of Tickets. ” is heritage. Throughout both narratives the usage of heritage can be seen easy.

Walker shows Dee misunderstands her heritage while Tan shows Jing-Mei comes to an apprehension. Understanding both sides of the two narratives gives readers a opportunity to research their ain heritage and reflect on how they accept their yesteryear. By contrasting the household characters in “Everyday Use. ” Walker illustrates Dee’s misinterpretation of her heritage by puting the significance of heritage entirely on material objects. Walker presents Mama and Maggie. the younger girl. as an illustration that heritage in both cognition and signifier passing from one coevals to another through a learning experience connexion.

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Dee. the older girl. represents a misconception of heritage as a material thing. Dee portrays a shred to wealths girl who does non understand what heritage is all approximately. Her definition of heritage bents on a wall to demo off. non to be used. Dee’s turning away of heritage becomes clear when she is speaking to Mama about altering her name. she says. “I couldn’t bear it any longer being named after the people who oppress me” ( Walker 746 ) . Dee merely takes another name without even understanding the true significance behind it.

She tries to explicate to Mama that her name now has significance. quality. and heritage ; ne’er recognizing that the new name means nil. Dee fails to recognize that her name goes back multiple coevalss. Dee digs around the house for objects she can expose in her ain place as illustrations of Afro-american common people art. Her statement with Mama about taking comforters that were manus stitched as opposed to run up by machine gives readers a opportunity to see Dee’s mentality of heritage is short lived. Dee says to Mama. “But they’re priceless. . .

Maggie would set them on the bed and in five old ages they’d be in rags. Less than that! ” ( Walker 748 ) . Mama will non let her girl to take the comforters because she has been salvaging them for Dee’s sister. Maggie. and she wants the comforters to be put into mundane usage. By assisting and populating with Mama. Maggie uses the hand-made points in her life. experiences the life of her ascendants. and learns the history of both. exemplified by Maggie’s cognition of the hand-made points and the people who made them—a cognition in which Dee does non possess.

Dee efforts to link with her heritage by taking “picture after image of me sitting at that place in forepart of the house. . . She ne’er takes a shooting without doing certain the house is included” ( Walker 746 ) . Therefore demoing Dee’s quest for heritage is external. wishing to hold these assorted points in order to expose them in her place. She allowed Dee to run over her adequate. and now she would non let her foolish behaviour to transport on. because heritage demands to be put to everyday usage and non merely be hung up on a wall for people to see.

Dee views her heritage as an artefact which she can possess and appreciate from a distance alternatively of as a procedure in which she is ever closely involved. She knows the points are hand-made. but she does non cognize the cognition and history behind the points. Yet. Mama does cognize the cognition and history and she besides knows that Maggie does excessively. Ironically. Dee criticizes Mama for non understanding heritage when. in fact. Dee fails to understand heritage herself. Throughout the narrative. the true significance of heritage is understood by two characters and avoided by one character.

Dee erroneously places heritage entirely in what she owns. non what she knows. In Amy Tan’s “A Pair of Tickets” the subject of Chinese-American life. focuses chiefly on mother-daughter relationships. where the female parent is an immigrant from China and the girl is exhaustively Americanized. Tan begins her narrative by depicting a feeling that Jing-mei. the storyteller. speaks of. She says. “The infinitesimal our train leaves the Hong Kong boundary line and enters Shenzen. China. I feel different. I can experience the tegument on my forehead prickling. my blood hotfooting through a new class. my castanetss hurting with a familiar old hurting.

And I think. my female parent was right. I am going Chinese” ( Tan 120 ) . Tan tells a narrative within itself giving readers a opportunity to acquire to cognize the character right off the chiropteran and besides leting an apprehension of heritage to be brought out. Jing-mei has come to China to follow her Chinese roots which her female parent told her she possessed. and to run into her two duplicate half sisters whom her female parent had to abandon on her effort to fly from the Japanese. Readers can see that Jing-mei has waited her whole life to link with her heritage when she says. “ .

. . I saw myself transforming like a wolfman. a mutant ticket of DNA all of a sudden triggered. retroflexing into a syndrome. a bunch of revealing Chinese behaviours. all those things my female parent did to abash me. . . . But today I realize I’ve ne’er truly known what it means to be Chinese. I am 36 old ages old. My female parent is dead and I am on a train. transporting with me her dreams of approaching place. I am traveling to China” ( Tan 120 ) . Although Jing-mei was non born in China like her female parent. she now has a appreciation on her life and on her female parents.

By holding the narrative take topographic point on a train in China. helps the tracing of heritage become existent for readers. Strong feelings of felicity and sorrow are felt when Jing-mei hints her Chinese roots and becomes in touch with her heritage and her yesteryear ; leting readers to put themselves in the same state of affairs and see the feelings are being portrayed by the characters. Learning about household heritage is something people do non ever understand. like Jing-mei. people do non ever want to believe their yesteryear and heritage.

When coming to an apprehension of their past. people can put to rest their urging ideas and can come closer in contact with their present life. Now that Jing-mei has met her sisters. she can now do peace in her life knowing that she has fulfilled her dreams and the dreams of her female parent. Amy Tan reveals Jing-mei’s epiphany good by composing. “I expression at their faces once more and I see no hint of my female parent in them. Yet they still look familiar. And now I besides see what portion of me is Chinese. It is so obvious. It is my household. It is in our blood. After all these old ages. it can eventually be let go” ( Tan 134 ) .

Jing-mei eventually realizes that she is Chinese and that her female parent was right. Jing-mei besides says. “Together we look like our female parent. Her same eyes. her same oral cavity. unfastened in surprise to see. at last. her long precious wish” ( Tan 134 ) . therefore adding on to her realisation of her heritage and yesteryear. Jing-mei can now put to rest the idea of her female parent ne’er seeing her duplicate girls once more and go on on with her bing life. but now with a different position. a Chinese position. Throughout both of the narratives. heritage becomes a major factor.

The characters coming to an apprehension of heritage helps readers to go more hypnotized with the narratives. Bringing out the points in Walker’s “Everyday Use” and Tan’s “A Pair of Tickets” gives readers a opportunity to see the heritage “shining through” . Mentions Tan. A. ( 1999 ) A Pair of Tickets. In E. Kennedy and D. Gioia ( 7th Ed. ) . Literature: An Introduction to Fiction. Poetry. and Drama. ( p. 120-134 ) New York City. NY: Longman. Walker. A. ( 2008 ) . Everyday Use. In R. DiYanni ( 6th Ed. ) . Literature: Reading Fiction. Poetry. and Drama. ( p. 743-749 ) . United States of America: McGraw Hill.

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