51 pages • 1 hour read
Amy TanTwo Kinds
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1989A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
The Piano
When Jing-mei first begins her piano lessons with Mr. Chong, her mother trades her cleaning services not only for weekly lessons, but also daily access to a practice piano. The Woo family could not afford a piano for their daughter, but its matriarch was determined to get her genius up to her high standards. Already over the idea of being groomed into a prodigy, Jing-mei balks at this setup; she is only able to recognize that she did not want to be forced into learning a new skill and doesn’t see what her mother is sacrificing for her to achieve it.
Once Jing-mei works out that Mr. Chong is deaf, she is lazy, continuing her lessons but slacking off during practice and never committing to it. He praises her dedication and believes she is playing well because he cannot hear her dissonant chords. Jing-mei’s confidence builds with his praise, and the ruse is upheld that her lessons are going well. Therefore, when Auntie Lindo brags about Waverly’s chess skills, Suyuan truly believes her daughter is capable of playing beautifully. On the occasion of the talent show, the Woos surprise Jing-mei with a piano of her own: “my parents had saved up enough to buy me a secondhand piano, a black Wurlitzer spinet with a scarred bench. It was the showpiece of our living room” (17). However, her lackluster performance at the talent show exposes her lazy attitude and lack of talent.
The secondhand piano, meant as a mark of highest achievement, becomes a symbol of fraud. After seeing her family’s disappointment in her performance, Jing-mei vows never to play again; after her fight with her mother, her declaration solidifies into truth: “The lid to the piano was closed, shutting out the dust, my misery, and her dream” (27). It is only after more than 20 years have passed, once her mother is dead and the piano retuned, that Jing-mei sits down to play again. And here is her revelation: the piece she played during the talent show has a companion piece, and together “Pleading Child” and “Perfectly Contented” make up two halves of the same song.
Shirley Temple
The figure of Shirley Temple appears multiple times in this narrative, and Tan uses her to signify the talented child, a prodigy, or someone who works hard to achieve success at a young age. She is the physical representation of Suyuan’s “American dream” for her daughter. Suyuan uses her both as a means of encouragement for her own daughter and as a measure for Jing-mei’s own merit.
Shirley Temple first appears in the opening paragraph of Jing-mei’s memories as the incorrect prodigy for her to emulate, but a call to action nonetheless: “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’” (2). Jing-mei watched Shirley tap dance, sing, and act and thought she was expected to perform like this as well; Shirley would cry, and her mother would encourage her, saying she already knew how to do all of that. Unfortunately, Suyuan brought Jing-mei to have her hair permed by a student in a beauty school; with subpar results, the instructor reformed her hair into a Peter Pan cut, insisting this would be the height of fashion. Here, Jing-mei and her mother do not see eye to eye: Jing-mei likes her new hair, while her mother is not impressed. Her failure to even have the proper haircut foreshadows the events of the concert.
Once Jing-mei feels permanently deflated by her mother’s tests and has been left alone for several months, her mother sees a young girl performing on The Ed Sullivan Show. She is Chinese-American, has a Peter Pan haircut, and can play the piano very well. She gives the girl the nickname of “Chinese Shirley Temple,” but begins to point out problems with her performance. It is a trick because as soon as Jing-mei defends the girl, her mother fires back that with practice, that could be Jing-mei. The Chinese Shirley Temple lights a new fire inside of Suyuan, encouraging her to do whatever it takes to provide her daughter with piano lessons—whether she wants them or not. Here, Suyuan has found a new image of success. She sees the girl on television that looks more like Jing-mei, and her ambitions for her daughter revive—Jing-mei can’t be Shirley Temple, but she can be like this girl.
Deafness
Mr. Chong’s deafness represents the disconnect between Jing-mei’s reality and the fiction her mother has built around her through her own expectations for her daughter and her unshakeable belief that with a bit of talent, and a good deal of practice, she can become a prodigy. As her piano teacher, Mr. Chong encourages Jing-mei, but he is unable to hear whether she is even hitting the right chords. Likewise, Suyuan believes in her daughter’s talent, but she never thinks to ask for a performance or any proof of her daughter’s progress. She is shocked to find that she has been bragging to the Joy Luck Club about her daughter when all the while, her daughter has not earned the praise.
The irony of a deaf piano teacher is immense; somehow, Mr. Chong keeps this fact a secret from Suyuan when she hires him, adding a layer of subterfuge to the lies the Woos are telling each other. Surely, if Suyuan has hired a deaf man to teach her nine-year-old daughter to play the piano and has never checked in on her to witness her progress over the course of a year, she is to blame for a portion of the shame her family experiences at the talent show. On the other hand, if Jing-mei has been practicing the piano for over a year with the understanding that her teacher cannot hear the sounds she’s producing and the awareness that she has been lazy with her studies, it is difficult to believe that she would expect her talent show performance to go well.
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By Amy Tan
