"A Pair of Tickets

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“A Pair of Tickets” Setting
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byJulie Flickner |

 
Tammy MataComposition IIPaper 1, Fiction AnalysisFebruary 17, 2008Word Count: |

Julie Flickner
Mrs. Mata
English 1302, Section 16522
17 February 2008
“A Pair of Tickets” Setting
Amy Tan’s “ A Pair of Tickets” is a story of a young girl’s journey to China to meet her two half sisters and facing the past her mother kept so private.   The setting of this story leads June May to understand her identity, how her attitude changes toward her heritage during her journey to China, and, more specifically, how her attitude toward her Chinese identity changes along with her surroundings and her interaction with her “Chinese” relatives.
June May’s journey begins in San Francisco, and its effects on her attitude towards her Chinese heritage. June May’s opinion of who she is and who she is not derives from the fact that she has been in America her whole life. June May does not know what it means to be Chinese. The cultural differences are the major barriers that she feels towards her Chinese heritage. She attends an American school, speaks English, and even surrounds herself with Caucasian friends that agree that she is “about as Chinese as they were”. (Tan 205) She would, of course, feel an enormous amount of anxiety coming to terms with her mother’s past and a culture of which she is not familiar. Regardless of her age, June May has lived her entire life in a different environment than what her parents were forced to deal with in China.
Sitting on a train, waiting to reach a new destination, June May faces a completely new set of questions. She travels to a distant land, one she is not familiar with, while her father seems to be almost joyous about returning to his native land.   As her father prepares to see his aunt that he has not seen since he was ten years old, June May has to consider how she will function in a country that she does not know. The dread of meeting her half-sisters and dealing with...