The story “Two Kinds,” written by Amy Tan, has a plot that many people can relate to while growing up as a child. The theme of the story is that there are two kinds of people: the one the mother wants her to be and the one Jing-mei (the protagonist and narrator of the story) strives to be. Both mother and daughter in the story have a very complicated relationship. The mother believes that you could become anything you wanted in America. The author emphasizes that Jing-mei’s mother tries to dominate and control her life in every possible way you can imagine. For example her mother’s persistent ways in trying to make her into something she’s not a “prodigy”, as well as making her take piano lessons so she can win against one of her mother’s …show more content…

Jing-mei was a believer at first, but as a consequence of the new unexpected look she stated, “if you don’t hurry up and get me out of here. I’m disappearing for good. And then you’ll always be nothing” (522). The author is trying to show us what was going on in Jing-mei brain at this certain time. Behind the acting idea, the child knew that she was just persuading her mother’s expectations by reflecting a personality that did not belong to her. Indeed the only role she was playing was of a puppet.
As the months went by and new experiences arrived, the mother came up with new ideas from watching The Ed Sullivan Show, like creating a famous piano player which ended up in a complete failure and public embarrassment. Jing-mei was encourage one more time by her mother to receive piano lessons from Mr. Chong, a retired piano teacher who lacked of the ability to discriminate between sound notes. The classes were settled up as a relieve for Jing- mei because for the first time ever, she was not pushed to be perfect by the instructor. The teacher would never realize about the mistakes and notes that were not according to the songs melodies. A public presentation in a talent show was the reason Jing- mei decided to quit to the emotional pressure offered by her mother. Since she was exposed to the public that did recognize how bad her performance was, but was more ironic was the