Your question touches upon a wide range of techniques that
Amy Tan uses in this short story mapping the inter-generational conflict between a first
and second generation immigrant. I am going to look at one of the motifs which is used
by the author throughout the story, though it is worth looking more closely at the short
story and seeing how the author uses figurative language in her narration as
well.
One of the most important motifs in this short story
is that of the American Dream and the power it exerts throughout the story, on both
Jing-Mei and her mother, but also on the other characters mentioned (for example
Waverley and the other Chinese families that Jing-Mei's mother brags
to).
The American Dream is expressed most succinctly by
Jing-Mei's mother who says "you can be anything you wanted to be in America." Coming to
the land of unfettered possibilities gives so many more opportunities to immigrant
families - far more than we know Jing-Mei's mother had in China. Thus we can understand
the power this has on immigrants, and in particular the pressure there is for
second-generation immigrants (immigrants who have been born in the States) to make the
most of these opportunities. Thus we can perhaps understand the pressure that Jing-Mei
is under.
The problem that Jing-Mei's mother does not
forsee that although there are unlimited choices in the States, those choices also
include the choice to not excel and the choice to be normal, which is what Jing-Mei
chooses to do. Coming to a land of freedom necessarily involves more freedom than
perhaps we would expect.
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