Please correct my draft

This essay is about analyzing the images and/or symbols in "Two Kinds" by Amy Tan. Please correct structure and mechanics (punctuation and run-ons). Thanks.




In the short story, there are images of disaster. For example, when she was playing the piano, the author described it by saying her hands were “bewitched.” She does not have any control over her hands. Therefore, she cannot correct the mistakes she makes. Thus, she cannot stop herself from failing. Moreover “bewitched” generally means something bad is going to happen. There are more images of disaster in the text. For instance, when the author walks back to her seat, she mentions that she is aware of eyes “burning” into her back. The word “burning” indicates that the way people were looking at her was as if she had committed a crime. They were looking at her the same way they look at a criminal walking in court. Furthermore, after the show was over, all the people were coming up at her “like gawkers at the scene of an accident.” This shows us that the authors’ failure that day was a disaster. Her disaster was so terrible, it’s almost like when a person dies in an accident. That’s the way the people at the show were treating her.

There are many images of fake hope present in the story as well. For example, Amy’s mother talked about “America” being the land of hopes. The land where wishes come true; where dreams take place. However, in reality this isn’t the case. We can still find problems that exist elsewhere in “America.”

We can find images of prodigy in “Two Kinds.” For example, when the daughter first started taking piano lessons, she “picked up the basics pretty quickly.” The fact that she learned “pretty quickly” indicates that she had talent in her. She did not put too much effort into learning, yet she seamlessly “picked up the basics.” This clearly shows that she can become a prodigy and make her mothers dreams come true. Additionally, when she played the song more than twenty years later, she was “surprised at how easily” the notes came back to her. Her talent wasn’t affected by the twenty years of not playing. She was “surprised” herself at how well she was playing. Usually, even the professionals need some practice time if they hadn’t played for a while. But she didn’t. Not only did she remember how to play the song but she also played it better than the previous times. Moreover, when she started playing the piano again, she played the song “Pleading Child” and after that she played “Perfectly Contented.” The titles of these two songs represent the two states she went through. “Pleading child” was when she was nine. She didn’t want to learn how to play the piano back then and always argued with her mother. “Perfectly Contented” is the state she is in right now, because she is in agreement with her mother and she is happy with what she has. The titles of the two songs both start with the same initials “P. C.” This reveals that they are closely related to each other. The author moves on from the state of the first song to the state of the next. In the same way, these two songs come one after another. This author confirms this when she says “I realized they were two halves of the same song.”

Throughout the story, we have images of laziness. For instance, during her piano lessons, the author learned that she could be “lazy” and get away with “lots of mistakes.” This reveals that the author was not self motivated and did not want to put any effort into becoming a prodigy. Instead, she expected herself to instantly change in between day and night. This reflects the mothers wrong belief that in “America” you could become “instantly famous.” This sentence influenced the author in a bad way, leading her to just fool around waiting for her prodigy rather than put an effort into changing herself. Another example of laziness occurs when the author was practicing for the show. She “dawdled” over the piece she was to play. A “simple” piece that “sounded more difficult than it was.” The word “dawdled” indicates again, the laziness of the author. “Simple” is used here to emphasize on the author’s total lack of effort. She seamlessly “picked up the basics” yet, she wasn’t able to memorize a “simple song.”