Friday, June 5, 2015

In "Two Kinds," what are three events that happen?

Well, there are plenty of "events" that happen in any
story, so you might want to think about narrowing down your question or making it more
specific. For me, the three main events that occur in this tale are as follows. Firstly,
I would select when Jing-Mei's mother sees the young Chinese girl on TV and comes up
with the idea of Jing-Mei showing that she is a prodigy through her talent on the piano.
Secondly, I would select the diastrous recital that Jing-Mei gives in front of an
audience including her parents when it becomes very clear how little Jing-Mei actually
knows. Lastly, I would select the final part of the story, when Jing-Mei realises that
the piece of music she played at the concert, entitled "Pleading Child," was one of two
pieces of music, being paired with "Perfectly Contented." The way the final paragraph
seems to describe the two pieces indicate the different stages of Jing-Mei's life and
the way that now she has managed to become perfectly
contented:


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"Pleading Child" was shorter but slower;
"Perfectly Contented" was longer but faster. And after I played them both a few times, I
realised they were two halves of the same
song.



Thus the music becomes
a kind of metaphor for Jing-Mei's life and the way that she has passed through two
distinct stages.

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