Two Kinds and Everyday Use - Essay Example

Both the stories tell about the influence that a mother has on her daughters. From another angle we can see the stark difference in regard to the relationship that a mother and her daughter shares in each story. In Everyday Use, we can see an African-American mother who is hardworking and has reared her two daughters by her own. She portrays herself as a “large, big-boned woman with rough, man working hands”. Her daughters are very different from each other. Her elder daughter Dee is arrogant, good looking, fashionable and judgmental of her own family and heritage.

Her younger daughter Maggie is meek and shy and feels overpowered by her sister. Her unimposing nature roots from the fact that she has burns and scars in her body from a previous house fire. A mother, we all know, loves her daughter in a special way because only she can know her daughter in an intimate way. In this story, as the mother waits for Dee to return home, describes the state of Maggie by saying “Maggie will be nervous until after her sister goes: she will stand hopelessly in corners, homely and ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs” (Walker).

In Two Kinds, it is about an Chinese-American mother who imposes her own dreams and ambitions on her only daughter Jing-Mei. It is easy to relate with the mother because in reality we can see many such examples where a mother tries to live her life and dreams through her child. In the initial years Jing-Mei tried hard to live up to her mother’s expectations. She was anxious to become a prodigy child. Her constant failures disappointed her mother and this made her cry in front of the mirror.

As she stands in front of the mirror she sees for the first time the rebellious side of herself in her reflection. She then promised herself that she will not let her mother change her and force her to become what she is not. “I won't let her change me, I promised myself. I won't be what I'm not” (Tan). The domineering nature of the mother ultimately resulted in drifting the daughter away from her mother, only to be reunited in the end after the mother’s death. This story also relates the unfaltering love that a mother has for her daughter.

While describing her mother, Jing-Mei says how she instilled in her the dream of becoming a prodigy. “Of course, you can be a prodigy, too," my mother told me when I was nine. "You can be best anything.” (Tan) The two stories give us two different pictures of a mother’s perspective of her daughters. This is reflected in the memories of the daughters when they are adult. Tan and Walker depict different dreams, values and beliefs of mothers in their stories. In Everyday Use, the mother of Dee and Maggie is a realist.

She considers herself as extremely hardworking. Since the father is never mentioned, it can be concluded that she is a single mother. “I can kill and clean a hog as mercilessly as a man. My fat keeps me hot in zero weather”. This is how she talks about herself. She goes on to protect Maggie from getting smothered under the arrogance nature of Dee by doing what she never did before. She described the moment by saying “I did something I never done before: hugged Maggie to me, then dragged her on into the room, snatched the quilts out of Miss Wangero's hands and dumped them into Maggie's lap.

” (Walker) Dee has little respect for her family heritage and attempts to influence her views on her mother and sister. She once refused the quilts when offered by her mother by saying they were “old~fashioned, out of style”. Dee now demands those same quilts although the mother desires to give them to Maggie who she thinks will make proper use of them. The mother is a