Scar Blog

Underneath it All

Focusing on: Scar

This chapter gave me the chills, chills that were caused by both Amy Tan's descriptions of the physical pains that the An-mei and her mother went through and the wording of her philosophical views on wounds and scars. When reading about the story behind An-mei's burn, I felt like I had been the one to had gotten burnt,or in other words, I felt as if I had pushed her out of the way and replaced her in the story. This chapter made me feel as if I had wounds all over my body and because of these " imaginary wounds" I felt extremely depressed and was able to emphasise with the physical pains of both An-mei and her mother, and thus was able to emphasise with their emotional pains as well. In the scene where An-mei's mother cuts her skin, I was at first only able to imagine the physical pain that she went through, and then through this understanding was later able to get a sense of the emotional pain that she was going through as well. A particular scene in which I was able to connect to was the scene in which An-mei's mother rubbed An-mei's "smooth-neck scar." This illustration of An-mei and her mother reminds of the times when my mom rubbed my skin when I got a bruise. Just like how An-mei feels mentally better when her mom rubs her skin, I felt the same when my mom rubbed my skin. Another scene in which I was able to connect to my life was the scene that described An-mei's fear and innocene as she walked past her father's painting. Just like how she "would quickly walk by [her] father with a know-nothing look and hide in a corner of [her] room where he could not see her [face]," my sister used to act the same way when she felt guilty and didn't want my parents to find out her secret wrong-doing. Aside from scenes, a character in this chapter who really annoyed me was the aunt. Although she was not greatly affected or really any part of the conflict, she always butted into the family's business and often scolded, slapped the children, and even talked smack about their mother saying things like, "She is so beneath others that even the devil must look down to see her."

I would describe the relationship between Popo and An-mei as a "foreign langauge," a relationship in which only the two people who speak it can understand. When Popo tells An-mei that she and her brother fell "out of the bowels of a stupid goose," and were "two eggs that nobody wanted," this oddly didn't anger or sadden An-mei but instead made her feel loved because she believed that Popo said this because she loved them. An-mei "translates" her grandmother's words as ," to Popo we were also very precious." At first, no one may understand why An-mei thinks this way, but later on readers are able to conclude that she reacts this way to Popo because An-mei has gotten used to the way her grandmother acts and can tell when she is serious. Another scene in which this is expressed is when Popo explained the procession that would take place if she was to die young. Some may conclude that Popo is cruel for "threatening" An-mei and scaring her, but the real motives behind Popo's actions are actually expressed when Popo begins to talk about An-mei's mother. Popo mentions An-mei's mother because she knows the true feelings of An-mei, despite An-mei's effort to hide them. Popo's strategy works and An-mei comes, "hurrying back from the other world to find [her] mother."

I noticed that Amy Tan used a lot of similes in this chapter. For example, when she was describing Popo's flesh she could have just said that her skin "had gone soft and rotten with a bad smell," but she also added the simile that, "Popo had swollen up like an overripe squash," summing up that fact more easily and precisely. Her use of similes improved her writing by helping readers feel more of a connection to the text by comparing bigger ideas to real-world objects.

An-mei's mother in a sense is the woman in the allegory who buys a swan. Just like the woman, An-mei's mother marries and becomes a concubine in hopes of creating an easier and better life for her daughter. But once again, just like the lady in the allegory, her hopes are crumbled and that "swan" or that "future" is taken away from her by the immigration officials, in this case Popo and her family. She is also left confused and speechless when she sees the negativities that ios are brought by her good-intentions. Her daughter is taught to ignore and look down upon her because she voluntarily becomes a concubine-a disgrace. Her good intentions are unknown to An-mei and appears as worthless. Her desire to provide for her daughter, becomes overshadowed by her familys' criticism and ignorance. An-mei's mother longs to reveal the purpose, the motives behind her action but is unable to. Though the allegory mentions words like "Coca-Cola" and "American" I believe that the allegory applies to the chapter Scar as well.