Parents-Children Conflicts in the Stories - Essay Example

Parents-Children Conflicts in the Stories All the stories, “Half and Half” by Amy Tan, “Woman Hollering Creek” by Sandra Cisneros, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates, and “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker written on different plots and contexts tend to deal with a common of parents-child relationship that parents are restrictive as well as conservative, while their children are more liberal and often erroneous in their decisions because of their lack of experience about the reality of life.

In all these stories the parents are, either explicitly or implicitly, oppose one or a number of their children’s decisions, either from a conservative or a calculative point of view. In contradiction to their parents’ opinions, the children choose to follow their own ways. In “Half and Half” the mother, An-Mei, primarily oppose her daughter Rose Hsu Jordan’s decision to marry her lover Ted, whereas the father reluctantly consents to his only daughter Cleofilas’s marriage with Juan Pedro.

In the same fashion, Ted’s mother also opposes his marriage with Rose. Also Joyce Carol Oates’ protagonist Connie is a young girl whose girlish fantasy about sexuality and juvenile dream of behaving like an adult are opposed by her mother. Her mother continually rebukes her for her sexual persona through her clothing and hairstyle. Indeed the fifteen years old protagonist Connie is in her adolescent rebellion against her mother’s opinions and decisions. In harmony with the theme of parent-child conflict in the preceding stories, Alice Walker’s story, “Everyday Use” presents a divergence between a mother’s and her young daughter’s views of heritage.

Alice’s protagonist Dee’s scope to receive education and to mix with a new environment gradually changes her view, about her culture, heritage and history, which are in open contrast with her mother’s views. Indeed in these parents-child conflicts in the stories, a father or a mother plays the role of an agent who is more experienced and more conservative, therefore more restrictive than their children. The stories present a usual picture of conflict between two generations: the old generation and the present generation.

The parental generation appears to caring and protective, while the young generation is more liberal and freedom-loving. But the children’s lack of experience necessarily makes their decisions to follow their own ways erroneous too. Indeed all of the authors have not presented the children’s self-decision as something erroneous. Rather they uphold the children’s decision to follow their own ways as something common with the nature of adolescent and the upcoming hazardous results of their decision as something their adolescent daughters need to go through.

Amy Tan’s Rose seeks to consult with her mother about Ted’s decision to divorce. But she already is aware of An-Mei’s conservative attitude towards marriage. She knows that her mother can provide no suggestion better than hers. Amy Tan wants to remind her readers that her protagonist should undergo a decision making process which is an essential part of life. Like Amy Tan, Sandra Cisneros and Joyce Carol Oates have chosen to let their protagonists face the harshness of the real world, since for a conventional feminist, a woman must undergo the hardship of life, but not spend her full life in comfort and protection of her father or husband’s house.

Even though Cleofilas’s father anticipates Pedro’s violent nature, he has not prevented her daughter from going with him. He simply puts stress on the point that as a father he will never abandon her, as he says, “I am your father, I will never abandon you” (Cisneros 475). According to Fitts, it is “her father rather than her mother who is the source of protection and solace” (Fitts). Indeed her father wants her to experience the world outside the protection of her father’s home.

Joyce Carol Oates’ also wants her protagonist Connie to know what a really matured woman means. Outside the periphery of her mother and sister’s protection, Connie faces the brutal nature of a male’s brutal sexual domination where there is no body to help her. And obviously Connie experiences a world that is quite different from what she can imagine. In it, a man is tempted only by a woman’s sexual appeal. Works Cited Cisneros, Sandra. “Woman Hollering Creek”, Literature and the Writing Process. Ed. Elizabeth McMahan, Susan X.

Day, and Robert Funk. 4th ed. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1996. Fitts, Alexandra. “Sandra Cisneros’s Modern Malinche: A Reconsideration of Feminine Archetypes in Woman Hollering Creek.” International Fiction Review. Jan. 2002. 23 Nov. 2002 Tan, Amy. “Half and Half”, The Joy Luck Club. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1989. Walker, Alice. “Everyday Use,” A Pocketful of Prose: Vintage Short Fiction, Vol. II. Ed. David .Madden. Boston: Wadsworth. 2006