Essay Ingles - A pair of tickets PDF

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Essay on A Pair of Tickets ...

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A Pair of Tickets “A Pair of Tickets” is a story that presents the journey of a woman, Jing Mei, as she struggles to find her identity. After her mother’s death, and to achieve her mother’s wish, she travels to China with her father to meet her long-lost twin sisters. At the end, she meets her family and begins to acknowledge her true heritage. Amy Tan’s “A Pair of Tickets” is a coming of age story about embracing one’s heritage and cultural origin. In this story, we can see how Jing Mei’s race and origin affects her relationship to the world. Jing Mei is a Chinese-American who was born in California, but all her life she denied her Chinese heritage. Growing up as a Chinese-American she didn't feel as a true Chinese, she didn't really feel the connection between her roots and who she really was. We can get an idea of her hatred towards her culture when she says “Cannot be helped” my mother said when I was fifteen and had vigorously denied that I had any Chinese whatsoever below my skin” (149, Tan). Her explicit display towards Chinese culture was set, as if she didn’t care at all about it. But, in reality, she felt left-out like she didn’t belong anywhere and that she couldn’t find her place in life. She felt as if something was missing, didn’t feel complete. But as her mother told her “Someday you will see” “It is in your blood, waiting to be let go” (149, Tan). She realized that she needed to go to China, not only to meet her sisters, but as an attempt to see if she felt a connection to her Chinese heritage. Also, because Jing felt that it was her duty to fulfill her mother’s wish; to meet her abandoned twin daughters. When she arrives in China, she expresses “The minute our train leaves the Hong Kong border and enters Shenzhen, China, I feel different. I can feel the skin on my forehead tingling, my blood rushing through a new course, my bones

aching with familiar old pain and I think, my mother was right. I am becoming Chinese” (149, Tan).

In this quote, we can see how she expresses her yearning of finally being part of

something, of getting that feeling of belonging. At this point, she understands what her mother tried telling her all those years; that someday she would truly feel Chinese. Although the trip to China wasn’t all because of finding herself and more because of the guilt she felt because of what her mother couldn’t accomplish. She got the most of it and ended up understanding the importance of her mother’s words. This realization sets forth the resolution of this short story. Coming of age is defined as when something reaches an important state of development or the process of growing up. In this story, we can see how the character of Jing Mei grows up in terms of getting to acknowledge her true self, who she really was. She became the person she never thought she was going to become, and got over her identity crisis. Her trip to China served as a turning point in her life, leading her to become a more secure and happy human being. Jing Mei’s conflict with her race is what sets forth this short story. Her not being a true Chinese, her not understanding of what being Chinese really meant were things that haunted and bothered her for many years, until she decided to travel and finally understands what everything meant. Another fact that was a little overwhelming for her was that she didn’t speak Chinese. Probably she would ask herself, how can I feel Chinese when I don’t even speak the language, when I barely just understand it? How can I relate to something that I don’t even have anything in common? She began to get the answers to these questions when she arrived in China and got together with her siblings. Although she didn’t speak the language, she found a way to consort with them. Jing took out the camera and instantly the little girl pose to get a picture taken. From this moment on, she felt as if everything was how it was supposed to be; she makes a true connection to her cultural origin.

A character’s gender and race affect the symbolic narrative of the text by how people perceive what a race is and, in this case, how Jing felt of her origin as Chinese. One may think that race is just how the society divides humankind because of distinct traits and characteristics or a group of people that shared some things in common such as culture, history, language or ethnic group. In this short story, Jing doesn’t feel as part of her Chinese race because she feels that she doesn’t share anything in common with them. Not even the language, making her feel left out and as part of other culture, the one she grew up with. The term race is not just a literal concept, it’s also a symbolic one. A person may feel as part of something they don’t physically appeal to, but feel connected in some way. This may be because of language, experiences, politics and even because of marriage; where a person modifies a way of living to be with another one that not necessarily share the same practices, culture or origins. “A pair of tickets” is a coming of age story about embracing one’s heritage and cultural origins. In this short story, the turning point where realizations come into place is when Jing and her father go to China. We can see how Jing’s internal conflict with her roots and racial origin cause her to deny who she really was and who she wanted to become. Truth is, Jing was just being ignorant, because one of a person’s most important qualities is to embrace who one is and to try to be part of one’s race/culture; to be part of a group of people that share, at least, one characteristic or thing in common.

Works Cited

Kennedy. X. J., and Dana Gioia. “A Pair of Tickets.” Literature: an introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing, Pearson, 2016, p. 149. “What Is A ‘Coming-of-Age’ Story?” Slap Happy Larry, 19 June 2017, www.slaphappylarry. com/what-is-a-coming-of-age-story/....