Literary Term: There is a compound sentence in the chapter Magpies. "This was a pond in our courtyard and I often poked a stick in the still water to make to turtle swim out from underneath the rocks(216)." By using a compound sentence, Tan's purpose is to show in two independent clauses, what the narrator did at the pond.
Quote from chapter 13: "Secrets are kept from children, a lid on top of the soup kettle, so they do not boil over with too much truth (237)."
Quote from chapter 14: "But thoughts are of two kinds. Some are seeds that are planted when you are born, placed there by your father and mother and their ancestors before them. And some thoughts are planted by others (245)."
In chapter 13, An-mei learns about her mother's story and what Second Wife did to her in the past. An-mei hears what horror her mother went through. She becomes one of Wu Tsing's many wives and loses her son to Second Wife. After Yan Chang tells An-mei all of this, An-mei is so shocked that she wishes she never had all this knowledge. "Secrets are kept from children, a lid on top of the soup kettle, so they do not boil over with too much truth." I saw this quote and thought of how some things are too much for children to handle. Sometimes, it is best to keep secrets from children just because they might not be old enough to understand completely.
Chapter 14 is about Ying-Ying who, as a girl, was beautiful and wild. Her vain personality made her believe no one quite reached her standards. "But thoughts are of two kinds. Some are seeds that are planted when you are born, placed there by your father and mother and their ancestors before them. And some thoughts are planted by others." When reading this, I thought about how some of our thoughts are placed in our minds by what our parents believe in. Sometimes, children go along with whatever their parents think because they've been raised around the same beliefs. However, many of our thoughts are shaped by who we associate with and what we expose ourselves to.
No comments:
Post a Comment