The Voice from the Wall

The Other Side

Focusing on: The Voice from the Wall

My initial reaction to the majority of this chapter was fear. Descriptions of ghosts, beatings, and death caused an eery tone and left countless scenes in my head way after I had finished the vignette. Amy Tan caused further fear by associating painful scenes with what seemed like forces from another world or dimension. For example, when I read about the scene in which Lena's baby brother was laid upon a table, he was not only described as having no brain but as also being able to "see everything inside [Lena's mother]," like a ghost or demon.

One adjective to describe the relationship between Lena and her mother is "telepathic ". Even as Lena said herself, "even as a young child, I could sense the unspoken terrors that surrounded our house, the ones that chased my mother until she hid in a secret dark corner of her mind," she is able to connect with her mother's feelings and "sixth sense." Also, Lena is able to literally translate her mother's thoughts and words, thus being able to understand her in multiple ways.

One writing technique that Amy Tan used in this chapter was imagery. For example, when describing Lena's eyes, Tan made readers imagine a person carving "two swift cuts" into a jack-o-lantern instead of simply saying that Lena's eyes were like two small slits.

I believe that the theme, or life lesson of this chapter is "once you've gone through a difficulty, you have basically already gone through the worst thing possible, so don't stay where you are but leave that fate behind and go back to life as if that difficulty had never happened, or in terms of the book "come to the other side of the wall."