Character and Theme in Amy Tan's "Two Kinds"
This paper analyzes character development and thematic content in Amy Tan's short story "Two Kinds," part of her novel The Joy Luck Club. The essay examines the protagonist as a round, dynamic character whose rebellion against her mother's ambitions ultimately harms herself more than anyone else. It traces how the daughter's determination to be ordinary, her refusal to push herself, and her estrangement from her mother all shape the story's central theme: the complex, often painful love between mothers and daughters, and how that love can be lost or forgotten across a lifetime.
- Introduction: Immigration, Identity, and Storytelling: Story context, narration style, and central conflict
- A Round Character Shaped by Disappointment: Protagonist's pain from failing to please her mother
- Rebellion, Self-Sabotage, and Identity: How defiance leads the daughter to limit herself
- The Deeper Theme: Love, Loss, and Growing Up: Identity, independence, and the cost of mediocrity
- Two Kinds of Daughters: The story's title explained through obedience and defiance
- Understanding Too Late: Loss and Reconciliation: Belated appreciation after mother's death
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What makes this paper effective
- It uses direct quotations from the primary text to support each analytical claim, grounding interpretations in textual evidence rather than assertion alone.
- It tracks the protagonist's emotional arc chronologically, showing how each stage of her rebellion has lasting consequences — a coherent cause-and-effect structure.
- The conclusion ties the paper's key threads together by connecting the story's title to its theme, demonstrating that the student understood the symbolic dimension of Tan's work.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates character-driven thematic analysis: rather than discussing theme abstractly, it uses the protagonist's specific choices and emotional responses as evidence for what the story is ultimately about. Each quotation is introduced with context and followed by interpretive commentary, modeling the classic "quote-explain-connect" pattern expected in literary essays.
Structure breakdown
The essay opens with a brief framing of the story's context (immigration, first-person narration), then moves through the protagonist's development in roughly chronological order — from early attempts to please her mother, through defiant self-sabotage, to her belated realization after her mother's death. Each body paragraph addresses both character and theme in parallel, and the final paragraph returns to the title's symbolic meaning, providing closure.
Introduction: Immigration, Identity, and Storytelling
"Two Kinds" is a story of immigration to America and all the opportunities available to immigrants in this country. The narrator is the protagonist of Amy Tan's novel The Joy Luck Club, but the voice feels close enough to Tan's own that it reads almost as autobiography. She tells the story in the first person, which makes it feel more immediate and real to the reader. The character changes throughout the story, which makes her a round character, and the central theme concerns the disagreements between mothers and daughters — disagreements that can last a lifetime.
A Round Character Shaped by Disappointment
This is a story about trying to please your parents and growing up. The protagonist is a round, dynamic character who shares her thoughts and feelings throughout the narrative. As a young girl, her mother wants her to do something remarkable. At first, the little girl does everything she can to please her mother, but she does not succeed. The reader can feel her pain and sorrow when she falls short. She remembers, "And after seeing my mother's disappointed face once again, something inside of me began to die" (Tan 348). Anyone who has tried to please a parent and failed can understand exactly how she felt at that moment. There is nothing worse than disappointing the people you are closest to, which is why she feels sad and guilty at the same time. Her mother wants the best for her, but she is too young to see that, and she begins to resent her mother and her mother's desire for her to be something special.
Rebellion, Self-Sabotage, and Identity
This character is round and fully realized because the experience changes her and reveals how powerful and strong she can be. She thinks to herself, "I won't let her change me, I promised myself. I won't be what I'm not" (Tan 348). She learns something from this experience, and that learning helps make her a more complex, believable character. She discovers that she has power over her mother and that she can even hurt her. She learns how to appear as though she is making an effort while actually doing very little. In short, she shortchanges herself and refuses to push herself toward improvement. She says, "But I was so determined not to try, not to be anybody different that I learned to play only the most ear-splitting preludes, the most discordant hymns" (Tan 350).
Like many young people, she rebels against her parents' beliefs and wants to be nothing like them. It takes her years to realize that the only person she truly hurt was herself. She cut herself off from her mother and her mother's feelings, and she chose not to strive for anything better. In the tradition of the short story form, this kind of ironic self-defeat — where a character's defiance costs them more than it gains — carries the full weight of the narrative's moral. She learns to accept mediocrity, and it makes her whole life uninspiring and dull.
References
Tan, Amy. "Two Kinds." Mothers and Daughters. 346–354.
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