“The Paper Menagerie” by Ken Liu represents one of the finest Chinese-American short narratives on relocation. Even though the anthology similarly concentrates on mother-son love, it addresses the fascinating issues of relocation more concisely. Liu’s protagonists are proxies who must adapt and appreciate weird and twisted survivalist conceptual frameworks among unfamiliar societies, occasionally to the detriment of their native and customary civilizations. Through the hardships of a family encompassing a Chinese-American lad ditching the mother’s way of life to adopt the father’s American cultural heritage, Liu recounts the tale of a disparaging disagreement between mother and son. The use of narrative elements and literary devices are artistic choices that authors use to enhance the complexity and depth of their writing to engage readers more.
This superb anthology is brimming with appropriate analogies for wonderful encounters and settings, symbolism, and satire that is both engaging and strangely shocking. The brief story’s obvious irony is that a mother’s love overcomes all difficulties and crosses all barriers. “Contempt…for his mother,” the narrator observes, “felt good like wine (Liu 27).” Nonetheless, near the end of the short story, we see his guilt, recognizing his mother has always expressed nothing except love for nurturing him. Jack’s transformation of his childhood interests in adoring and appreciating origami to look American and blend into his current adolescent status as an American is fascinating and provides vital life insights for immigrants.
One element of literary device used in Kun Liu’s short story is hyperbolae. When Jack’s mother is writing, she says she is writing wholeheartedly. Juxtaposition is emphasized in the short story where Mark’s toys are American, and Jack’s toys are Chinese. Mark’s toys were Star Wars action figures while Jack’s were origami, made by his mother (Liu 30). These toys belonging to both kids significantly show the differences in the family, which may have attributed to Jack pulling away from his culture and mother and what it had to offer and more towards his father’s culture. This device clearly emphasizes how powerful it is when used in writing and is highly significant to readers.
While Liu effectively implores the audience of the attractiveness and importance of multicultural diversity and ideals of common humanitarianism, it is up to Jack to forge his new personality with the myriad elements of cultural tastes presented to him by the American encounter. As the New Year approaches, a lovely depiction of a cosmopolitan utopia is created with themes of multi-flavored delicacies, diverse cultures combining happily, and people adoring and embracing pastimes and celebrations as a perfect representation of multiculturalism (Liu 40). The concept of diversification of culture and universal humanity is lavishly colored, and numerous symbols are employed to illustrate the machinations that ethnic disputes generate.
The animosity Jack generates for his mother and the notion that he bans his mother from speaking in Chinese serve as a harsh recall of the family’s pain. Motif, another literary device, takes the stage here; “English,” I shouted, intensifying my voice, “Speak English,” Jack yelled at her mother (Liu 32). Despite this, the mother strained to acquire the new language and made only slow headway. Jack studies Mandarin since his father compels him, but he is resentful that his mom is not working harder to acquire English and hence declines to communicate in her home tongue. Jack’s mother, on the contrary, discovers another means to contact her son. Designing amazing origami animals that are lifelike was one of the talents she received from her village.
Many authors use ambiguity to let the readers draw their conclusions on the stories they are reading according to how fitting their imagination is. The ambiguity in this story is seen in whether the magic connected to the origami animals developed by Jack’s mother comes to life or not. Ambiguity and not giving answers to readers is a very important aspect of authors. The syntax can be seen when Jack’s mom says, ‘no one understood me, and I understood nothing (Liu 41).’ This brings beauty to the story as it shows mirroring between sentence parts and brings out some extent of synchrony, and shows how misunderstood the mother is.
The shifts in the story, which involve breaking patterns, mirror the relationship between Jack and the mother. Starting from the son’s point of view, how is judging his mother and how he does not want to communicate with her, and the narrators shift right at the end towards the mother’s side of things as she speaks for herself. That shift is a significant change for the reader as the story changes the teller’s paradigm. Allowing the reader to understand from two points of view and understand the severity of the matter at hand.
How Jack treats his animals is a major signifying of how he treats his mother. At first, when he is young, he admirably treats the animals as he finds them incredible. As Jack gets older, a shift takes place where he feels embarrassed about them and locks them away in a shoebox under his bed and totally ignores the new ones his mom makes for him. Later on, when he is an adult, his girlfriend helps him see things differently, and he shifts from disliking them to admiring and appreciating them again. The most significant shift is where he unfolds the animals, understands his mother deeper, and folds them back to carry on with his mother’s legacy. Those shifts are extremely informative, and as earlier, the breaking pattern shows how Jack felt about his mother throughout the time.
The primary issue between Jack and his mother began with cultural variations. Jack grew estranged from his mother. When he is an adult, he discovers a letter and locates an individual who can interpret it. And this young woman, who has just gotten off a Chinese tour bus, decides to assist Jack in reading the letter. Reading reveals the true meaning left behind by his mother, and he realizes that his mother’s love is unmatched and everlasting. Regardless of what he did to her, she recalls his kid and shows her compassion through the letter by writing, “Son, Mom loves you,” till her final breath (Liu 36). Memories returned to him, revealing how selfish, bigoted, and unjust he had been to his mother.
The mother’s letter symbolizes the idea that her culture and individuality will always be in him, a part of him —and her affection for him. Reading the document, Jack realizes his mother’s challenges and the delight his birth brought her. He is impacted by plenty of feelings at once as he internalizes everything- remorse, sense of loss, anguish, and most vividly: adoration for his mom, which can be noticed in the manner he jots ‘ai’ quite so many times (Liu 36). It shuttered his heart not seeing his mother’s love when she was alive and had to find out when she was gone.
Metaphors can be seen when neighbors from the white neighborhood say that Jack is a little monster. This is a form of racism by the white neighborhood people as they mean Jack’s facial physique is foreign to them, that he somewhat looks like a monster, and yet he is just a normal human. This is horrible to state because it expresses the neighbors’ xenophobia and discomfort with Jack’s non-American features. That metaphor, ‘a little monster,’ details the quiet racism in the neighborhood and the quiet expectations people have in real life over someone who is American (Liu 30). Symbolism is used when the mom creates the origami toys for Jack with much love and compassion. Throughout the story, the creation of the origami toys represents the love and culture of Jack’s mother. Whether inflated, deflated, tucked away in a shoebox, or appreciated, it represents Jack’s rejection or acceptance of his mother and her culture, but they remain to exist all along.
Dramatic irony is depicted in the story where Jack found out how his parents met and despised his mother for lying so that she can get purchased as a wife by an American man and felt disgusted by that. Interestingly, with all the despising and rejection of his mother, when Jack was applying for colleges, he stated that he was conjuring lies to sell himself to the colleges. Without really knowing it, Jack gradually embraced what he had rejected from his mother in a somewhat different, more American-acceptable form since he was using lies just like his mother. But for Jack’s case, the reader can argue that he dishonestly did that, out of his own volition, unlike his mother, who was forced into the situation.
Liu’s use of the elements mentioned above, and many more, clearly engages the reader and allows readers to formulate their thoughts as per their imagination concerning the story. He does not limit one’s imagination, and one can wander as far as one can, for instance, judging the mother from Jack’s point of view until the reader hears from the mother’s side. The purpose of identifying the above-mentioned literary devices has helped us understand the true over-arching meaning of the story as intended by the author. Therefore, until fully understanding the story, is when readers can narrowly define all the elements in it and broaden their thought even further.
Work Cited
Liu, Ken. “The paper menagerie.” Head of Zeus, 2016, 26-43.