Amy Tan the \"American Dream,\"

Amy Tan

The "American dream," despite being a reasonably abstract idea, tends to act upon individual people in very direct ways -- it can actually influence the way people behave and the choices they make in their lives. This makes the American dream a reasonably potent force within the confines of American society. As Amy Tan's short story, "Two Kinds," indicates, belief in the American dream can significantly affect cross-generational relationships. In the story, Tan and her mother -- despite Tan's very young age -- seem to disagree over how realistic attaining the American dream truly is. This puts a continuing amount of strain upon their relationship; this is because Tan feels that the geniuses and prodigies of society attained most of their skills or fame through luck, while her mother maintains that these things are achieved purely through effort and perseverance. Accordingly, Tan's failures come to represent her overall laziness, rather than the true maximization of her talents.

At the beginning of the story, Tan introduces us to her mother's broad understanding of how the American dream operates: "My mother believed you could be anything you wanted to be in America. You could open a restaurant. You could work for the government and get good retirement. You could buy a house with almost no money down. You could become rich. You could become instantly famous," (Tan). These beliefs grow directly out of the basic notion of the American dream: the idea that the social classes in the United States are somehow a reflection of individual effort and aptitude; as if American society exists as a level playing field, in which each person starts with the same set of tools, and success is simply a matter of using them properly. Generally, there is an often-held belief that the social classes and wealth in the United States are continually fluctuating -- that anyone can begin their lives in poverty and work their way out, if they put in enough work.

Tan expresses that from an early age, she was skeptical of this concept. Her mother saw Shirley Temple on television, and tried to mold her into a similar character; although Tan was convinced at first by her mother that her fame was attainable, she eventually realized that she plainly lacked the innate charm, talent, and attractiveness of the famous child -- not to mention the Hollywood connections. She writes, "I looked in the mirror above the bathroom sink, and I saw only my face staring back - and understood that it would always be this ordinary face - I began to cry. Such a sad, ugly girl! I made high - pitched noises like a crazed animal, trying to scratch out the face in the mirror," (Tan). At this point, Tan surrenders the dream of being the adorable television sweetheart, but is not yet ready to give-up the dream of attaining some level of fame through being a "prodigy." Her mother repeatedly tells her that anyone can be a prodigy in America; so, whenever she falls short, it becomes a reflection of her failure to try hard enough.

Tan's experience with the piano underscores the stark contrast between the way her mother believed fame and fortune work in America, and the way she believed they worked. She writes, "Unlike my mother, I did not believe I could be anything I wanted to be, I could only be me. And for all those years we never talked about the disaster at the recital or my terrible declarations afterward at the piano bench.... So I never found a way to ask her why she had hoped for something so large that failure was inevitable," (Tan). To Tan, the goals associated with the American dream were simply so lofty, and so exaggerated, that assessing blame to the individual for failing to live-up to them was completely unjustified. Still, to the very end -- even though her mother eventually stopped pushing her to become a prodigy -- her mother held the belief that such social benefits come to those who simply keep working: "You have natural talent. You could be a genius if you want to," (Tan).