Posted: September 13th, 2017

Literature Analysis

Literature Analysis

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Write an analysis on the “Creative Paper” you wrote and a story from our readings, you should carefully explain the way your project relates to other works from the

class. You should consider not only the theme or rhetorical argument of the text but also the style and form of the text. How is it different or similar to texts we

have studied? You might construct your analysis as a comparison/contrast with a text from class. How might different theoretical lenses bring to light different

aspects of your work?

I wrote a story called “Mirrors” I will attach the story, I want it to be analyzed against the story “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan. The theme of the two stories are the

“COMING OF AGE” how a young person goes through an experience to make them grow and understand life. In both stories the girls come of age but in my story the daughter

is trying so hard to impress her mother while in Two Kinds the child does not try at all, I need the stories analyzed by comparing and contrasting how the stories

relate but also how they differ.

“MIRRORS”

“Rebecca!” “Rebecca, we have to go right now or else we are going to be late!” Yelled Rebecca’s mother, a woman in her late twenties, thin and petite, with a beautiful

complexion, so beautiful that wherever she went people would stop and gaze at her, as if they had never witnessed such natural beauty. Rebecca, a young girl eight

years of age was standing upstairs rehearsing her lines in the mirror, she looked straight in the mirror and said, “Today is the day Rebecca, you will win, as you

always do, but this time, your mother will be proud, she will stand and clap for you, she will tell you how proud she is, yes today is the day!” Rebecca knew deep in

her heart that this would probably never happen, but maybe today would be the day. But everyone, even Rebecca knew, her mother was sick, but still Rebecca felt today

was going to be the day, the day that she would make her mother proud.

Rebecca stood on stage, her huge pageant hair and makeup could be seen a mile away, she preformed her tap solo, she made her beautiful speech, and within that instant

everyone knew she had won. She was a young girl like no other, with grace, intelligence, and beauty, a beauty just like her mothers, it was a beauty that without all

the makeup still stood out in the crowd, a unique beauty, but a beautiful strange. Rebecca’s name was announced, and yes she had won, she stood there as they put the

pageant sash around her neck, as they placed the crown on her head, she smiled and waved respectfully. Thunder struck in the crowd and everyone was clapping and

screaming Rebecca’s name, but there sat Rebecca’s mother, with the same slimy smirk on her face as every other time, she did not stand, she did not even clap for her

daughter, she just smirked. On the way home Rebecca asked her mother, “Mom, how do you think I did today?” “Did I look okay on stage?” “Was my hair too big this time?”

“What could I have done differently?” Rebecca’s mother looked in the rear view mirror at her daughter and with exhaustion said, “You did fine Rebecca, as every other

time, but there were so many prettier girls there today, I don’t know how the judges did not see that, I am still shocked you won!” Rebecca looked out the window and

sighed, “Your right mom, there were a lot of prettier girls, I probably wont by default” Her mother looked back and nodded to agree. Rebecca thought to herself, “I

will have to get prettier, I will have to practice more.”
“I guess today was just not the day,” Rebecca said aloud. Her mother ignored her and continued to turn up the volume on the radio. But Rebecca knew her mother was just

sick, Rebecca knew she would try harder, Rebecca knew this would be the only cure for her mother; she had to make her mother proud!

For years Rebecca tried, she tried so hard to make her mother proud that she became obsessed with the thought of her mother clapping and shouting out her name. Rebecca

would dream of this moment, and wake up knowing that day would be the day. But the day never came. Rebecca took on ballet, hip-hop dance, piano, clarinet, and

gymnastics. She thought maybe if she became a tomboy her mother would appreciate her trying something knew, so she played softball and soccer, she even started running

track. But at every game, after every 1st place trophy her mother would find a way to ruin the moment for Rebecca, she would compare her to the other children on the

teams, or find a reason why Rebecca should not have won.

Rebecca was a straight A student, and after every report card, she knew her mother would just hug her and tell her how wonderful she was, but it was always the same

smirk. Her mother would look briefly at the grades, and if there were a 92 instead of a 93 her mother would scold Rebecca for not studying enough! Rebecca was not like

all the other kids in school, she stood out, she went above and beyond what the teachers and coaches expected, she would spend nights practicing routines over and over

until it was perfection. All the parents of the other students wanted their child to be like her, but her mother wanted more.

One night when practicing her ballet routine Rebecca’s mother came bursting into her room, “Listen Rebecca, if you don’t have it by now, you just don’t have it, I

don’t know why you are trying so hard anyways!” But Rebecca knew, she knew why she was trying so hard, because she was sure it would be the routine that made her

mother proud, her mother would be cured from her sickness after she saw this routine. But the routine did not make her mother proud, and it did not make Rebecca’s

mother well, the routine only brought more obsession and pain for Rebecca.

Rebecca became obsessive; she was so overloaded with school and extracurricular activities that the dreaded day came when Rebecca brought home a B on her report card.

Rebecca knew that her mother would surely not love her after this. Rebecca quickly ran into the house after school, and there was Rebecca’s mother, just waiting, as

though her mother already knew of her failures. And suddenly it happened, Rebecca’s mother grabbed her, put her in front of the mirror and said, “Now Rebecca repeat

after me,” “I am a failure, I am no good, I will never be loved, I will never be enough!” And with sadness and tears in her eyes, Rebecca looked into the mirror and

repeated it all, and then she knew, she knew her mother would never be proud of her, her mother would always be sick.

Those words stuck in Rebecca’s head, every day, every night, but she didn’t stop trying, she continued to do well in school, she was President of her class, and with

graduation approaching she was named Valedictorian of her senior class. She sent off applications to some of the most prestige schools in the country, and when her

acceptance letter arrived, she knew this was going to be what cured her mother for good. Rebecca went over the moment in her head millions of times; she had it all

planned out. She was going to go home, bust through the door, sit her mother down and show her mother the acceptance letter to YALE, and Rebecca just knew her mother

was going to jump up and down, illness and all, and hug her, and praise her name! This was going to be Rebecca’s moment. This was going to be the moment that was going

to change her life forever.

That moment did prove to be the moment that changed Rebecca’s life, in a way like no other. Rebecca rushed home, and as she pulled into her driveway, she saw nothing

but police cars and ambulances. She jumped out of the car, acceptance letter in hand, and rushed through the door, and then she saw her. Her mothers laying on the

ground, beside a bottle of opened pills, a picture that will forever stay in Rebecca’s memory. Every thing around her went silent, and all she could do was fall to her

knees and watch as the paramedics did all they could to save her mother, but her mother was too far gone, she had already drifted off, leaving all the pain and agony

with her family, she had finally laid herself to sleep. Rebecca could not even cry, all she kept thinking was, “Today was suppose to be the day, the day I would make

my mother proud.”

Rebecca graduated a few months later, and as she stood before her class, she talked about goals, and dreams, but she knew she no longer had any goals. She had no

purpose to try any longer, because what she truly wanted could never be accomplished. She had done all she could, nothing ever being enough. The dreams, the goals, the

passion to impress, but there was no purpose to impress the dead, as she would never get to hear them shouting her name, she would never feel the warmth of a hug, she

knew that her future was over.

It’s true, after high school, Rebecca declined her acceptance to all the prestige colleges; she stayed near home at the local community college. She worked part time

to pay for school, she passed her classes with C’s, and everyone told her she too had become sick. She blamed her mother for ruining her life; she would curse her

mother’s grave. “You destroyed me,” Rebecca would yell. “You kept pushing and pushing, but I was never enough!” “I hate you, I inherited your sickness!” Rebecca would

yell to the skies. Rebecca did became sick, looking at herself in the mirror, she would pick herself apart, all of the natural beauty had now turn to viciousness, and

you could see it a mile away. Rebecca found new ways to self-destruct throughout the years. One year it would be alcohol, the next it would be eating disorders, until

finally she knew, she knew she wasn’t just sick but she was very ill, ill just like her very own mother.

On Rebecca’s twenty-first birthday her father approached her, “Rebecca, I know you are ill, but I have a gift for you, it was from your mother.” Rebecca was hesitant,

apart of her did not even want the gift, but she was also intrigued, inside she always wanted one last attempt to make her mother proud. Rebecca opened the box and

inside was a scrapbook and on the cover was a picture of her mother holding Rebecca on the day she was born. There was a caption underneath the picture that read, “The

greatest day of my life.” Rebecca began to flip through the pages, and every page was a picture of Rebecca’s accomplishments. A picture of Rebecca at her pageants with

her trophies and crowns that read, “I was always your number one fan!” Another picture of her crossing the finishing line with the caption, “You were always number one

in my life!” Pictures, and pictures, with captions that read, “I was so proud of you that day!” others that said, “Proudest mother in the world!” Rebecca could not

believe it, she even questioned that maybe her father had done this. Rebecca had spent her entire life trying to impress her mother, all she ever wanted was to hear

her mother say she was proud, but her mother never said it aloud, but it was here, all in this book, she really had been the apple of her mother’s eye.

On the final page of the scrapbook, Rebecca saw that her mother had put a small mirror from a makeup compact onto the center of the page; it was glued down with small

sentences surrounding the mirror. The sentences read, “You should always be proud,” “You will always be loved,” “You are always enough,” “You WERE always enough!”

Rebecca read these lines, over and over, taking in every word. She noticed her mother had underlined each YOU at the beginning of the sentences, and that is when it

dawned on her. For Rebecca’s entire life, she had always tried to make her mother proud, she did everything she could, she practiced and practiced for perfection, she

depleted herself and her self esteem. But Rebecca secretly knew it wasn’t her mother that she was trying so hard to impress, if her mother was not impressed, she would

not have allowed her to partake in so many activities. It was never her mother that she wanted love from, all this time; the only person she was battling was herself,

the person that was staring back at her in the mirror.  She never knew when to accept herself, flaws and all, she never knew when enough was just that, enough.

Rebecca knew her mother was sick; her illness was not that she was never proud of her daughter, instead her mother just did not know how to express her love for her

daughter, and she was not sure how to tell Rebecca how proud she actually was. Rebecca’s mother never knew how to love herself, she did not know how to accept herself

for her weaknesses, Rebecca’s mother was so ill because she did not know how to be proud of herself. Rebecca’s mother had lost the battle, the battle that we all face,

the battle with ourselves.

Two Kinds
by Amy Tan
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.
Of course, you can be a prodigy, too,” my mother told me when I was nine. “You can be best anything.
What does Auntie Lindo know? Her daughter, she is only best tricky.”
America was where all my mother’s hopes lay. She had come to San Francisco in 1949 after losing
everything in China: her mother and father, her home, her first husband, and two daughters, twin baby girls.
But she never looked back with regret. Things could get better in so many ways.
We didn’t immediately pick the right kind of prodigy. At first my mother thought I could be a Chinese
Shirley Temple. We’d watch Shirley’s old movies on TV as though they were training films. My mother
would poke my arm and say, “Ni kan.You watch.” And I would see Shirley tapping her feet, or singing a
sailor song, or pursing her lips into a very round 0 while saying “Oh, my goodness.”
Ni kan, “my mother said, as Shirley‘s eyes flooded with tears. “You already know how. Don’t need talent
for crying!”
Soon after my mother got this idea about Shirley Temple, she took me to the beauty training school in the
Mission District and put me in the hands of a student who could barely hold the scissors without shaking.
Instead of getting big fat curls, I emerged with an uneven mass of crinkly black fuzz. My mother dragged
me off to the bathroom and tried to wet down my hair.
You look like a Negro Chinese,” she lamented, as if I had done this on purpose.
The instructor of the beauty training school had to lop off these soggy clumps to make my hair even again.
Peter Pan is very popular these days” the instructor assured my mother. I now had bad hair the length of a
boy’s; with curly bangs that hung at a slant two inches above my eyebrows. I liked the haircut, and it made
me actually look forward to my future fame.
In fact, in the beginning I was just as excited as my mother, maybe even more so. I pictured this prodigy
part of me as many different images, and I tried each one on for size. I was a dainty ballerina girl standing
by the curtain, waiting to hear the music that would send me floating on my tiptoes. I was like the Christ
child lifted out of the straw manger, crying with holy indignity. I was Cinderella stepping from her
pumpkin carriage with sparkly cartoon music filling the air.
In all of my imaginings I was filled with a sense that I would soon become perfect: My mother and father
would adore me. I would be beyond reproach. I would never feel the need to sulk, or to clamor for
anything. But sometimes the prodigy in me became impatient. “If you don’t hurry up and get me out of
here, I’m disappearing for good,” it warned. “And then you’ll always be nothing.”
Every night after dinner my mother and I would sit at the Formica topped kitchen table. She would present
new tests, taking her examples from stories of amazing children that she read in Ripley’s Believe It or Not
or Good Housekeeping, Reader’s digest, or any of a dozen other magazines she kept in a pile in our
bathroom. My mother got these magazines from people whose houses she cleaned. And since she cleaned
many houses each week, we had a great assortment. She would look through them all, searching for stories
about remarkable children.
The first night she brought out a story about a three-year-old boy who knew the capitals of all the states and
even the most of the European countries. A teacher was quoted as saying that the little boy could also
pronounce the names of the foreign cities correctly. “What’s the capital of Finland? My mother asked me,
looking at the story.
All I knew was the capital of California, because Sacramento was the name of the street we lived on in
Chinatown. “Nairobi!” I guessed, saying the most foreign word I could think of. She checked to see if that
might be one way to pronounce Helsinki before showing me the answer.
The tests got harder – multiplying numbers in my head, finding the queen of hearts in a deck of cards,
trying to stand on my head without using my hands, predicting the daily temperatures in Los Angeles, New

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