Half and Half

Nengkan
Focusing on: Half and Half

The actions, words, and mentality of An-mei Hsu truly were inspiring and reminded me of the hidden power or motherly nengkan. Though Bing, An-mei's son, was most likely gone for eternity,she had hope and thus continuously searched for him with all her power and ability. She went past her limits and did unimaginable things like jumping into the ocean, despite the fact that she did not know how to swim. In many ways An-mei reminded me of my mother. She was like my mother in that my mother also had in a sense nengkan. An-mei also reminded me of my mother because of the everlasting hope and positiveness that she had in times of difficulty. Besides An-mei, there was another character that caused me to react. This character was Rose Hsu, who oddly reminded me of myself. Her slowness to react when Bing drowned frustrated me, not only because she could have saved him but also because I believe that I would have done something similar. Though, I do not blame her for the entire situation, I believe that she played a huge part in it. One scene that affected me was the scene in which Ted sent Rose divorce papers.Though he had "loved" her and desperately held onto her, Ted insisted on ending the relationship based on the fact that Rose couldn't make her own decisions, or basically because she lacked "leadership". Their relationship reminded me of the many foolish relationships that young people have and the divorces that so many couples simply decide upon today. Apart from my reactions, I also have a question. I just wanted to make sure if I was interpreting the following text correctly. When Amy Tan says: "My mother is not the best housekeeper in the world, and after all these years that Bible is still white clean." I was wondering if it meant that An-mei still had hope and was continuously keeping her faith in God.

One adjective to describe the relationship between Rose Hsu and An-mei is "ying-and-yang ." When Rose says, "there's no hope. There's no reason for trying," upon her marriage, An-mei is there encouraging her saying, " Because you must, this is not hope. Not reason. This is your fate. This is your life, what you must do." Since Rose and An-mei have very different mentalities this causes one person, in this case An-mei, to be or to have more of something, in this case "optimism." An-mei's positiveness helps in her efforts to convince and give hope to Rose, who is in the process of giving up on her marriage. In this way, they are each others' opposites and are able to balance each other out, just like ying-and-yang.

One writing technique that Amy Tan used in this chapter was foreshadow. An example of this was shown when Tan was describing the characteristics of the cove at the beach. She drew an image of a ominous, dark cove when she said, "this beach cove was a terrible place, full of wet shadows that chilled us and invisible specks that flew into our eyes and made it hard for us to see the danger," causing readers to get a sense that there was some kind of danger ahead that dealt with the beach cove, which was exactly what happened. Her use of foreshadow made the story better in that it helped build a mood and made a better approach towards the climax.

I believe that the theme, or life lesson of this chapter is "never give up." Though An-mei is unable to find her son, who is probably long gone, she still has hope and shows this when it is revealed to the readers that she has written " 'Bing Hsu' lightly in erasable pencil," in her Bible in, "a section called 'Deaths,' " suggesting that she still believes that he is alive somewhere. This is also revealed throughout this whole chapter in that An-mei expresses and tries to pass down her everlasting hope to Rose telling her, " 'You must think for yourself, what you must do. If someone tells you, then you are not trying.' " An-mei's life story is full of hope and seems to teach readers that there is always hope and that you should never ever give up.