Student Question

What is the climax in "Two Kinds"?

Quick answer:

The climax in "Two Kinds" occurs during the terrible fight between Jing-mei and her mother on the day after her disastrous piano performance. In this tension-filled scene, both mother and daughter say hurtful things to one another in anger.

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The climax—otherwise known as the moment of the most tension—in "Two Kinds" comes the day after the disastrous piano recital, when Jing-mei's mother tries to make her practice the piano again.

After her terrible performance, Jing-mei is shocked when her mother insists that she return to practicing the piano, and she refuses. Jing-mei feels that her mother has treated her very unfairly in pressuring her to play piano and thinks, "I wasn't her slave. This wasn't China." Jing-mei's mother is obsessed with trying to figure out in what way Jing-mei might possibly be a child prodigy, like Shirley Temple, or a child that knows all the capitals of the world, or the girl who plays the piano on the Ed Sullivan show. The more her mother pushes her, however, the more Jing-mei feels like a huge disappointment.

When they fight after the recital, Jing-mei's mother says that there are only two kinds of daughters, those who are obedient to their parents and those who "follow their own mind!" She declares that she will only accept an obedient daughter as her own. Angry, Jing-mei says she wishes that she weren't her mother's daughter. When that does not seem to impact her mother, Jing-mei says that she wishes she were dead, like the twin daughters her mother had been forced to abandon in China years before. The effect on her mother is like "magic," Jine-mei says. Stunned and hurt, her mother leaves the room and never insists on the piano again.

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