Fish_Cheeks

AP English The concept of “Fish Cheeks” begins with Amy describing her Christmas Eve dinner when she was at the age of fourteen, and the embarrassing discomfort she felt when her crush, Robert and his family had been invited to have dinner with her family.  When she found out he was invited to dinner, she panicked about what he might think of her and her family. In her mind thinking, "What would Robert think of our shabby Chinese Christmas'” Amy Tan persuades teenage girls to be proud of who you are and what culture you come from. A rhetoric strategy used by the author is the use of similes and allusions. In the middle of the first paragraph the author says, “He was not Chinese, but as white as Mary in the manger.” This quote is easily shows an example of a simile, for the author compares the boy to Virgin Mary. This quote is an allusion too, for the reason that she makes the connection between to how pure Mary is to the boy. The author uses this rhetoric strategy to persuade her audience by drawing them in and having them make connections that they can easily relate to. The author’s audience is mostly teenage girls and when girls read “Mary in the Manger”, most likely they will make a connection of how Mary was a pure woman and what happened to Mary as well. Amy draws her readers in by reminding them of their crushes and how they would view their crushes at the time and most likely, people tend to view their crushes to be perfect (looks and personality) with no flaws, which in this case, to be pure. What Amy tries to portray from using this rhetorical strategy is to let people know that by being proud of the culture they come from, people, even those that may seem perfect and pure, may not hold it against them. Another rhetoric strategy used by the author is the use of alliteration. In the beginning of the fourth paragraph, it states,” Dinner through me deeper in despair” and in the end of the fifth paragraph it says,” I was stunned into silence”. These quotes are examples of alliteration; they show two or more stressed syllables in each statement. This is an effective rhetorical strategy, since it absorbs the reader more into the story by saying a catchy saying, but yet it’s still an important detail in the story. When Amy describes the kind of impact her dinner experience was having on her, the alliteration used for this part of the story, had meaning and description for the reader to clearly understand how the character was feeling. By using alliterations it makes it easier to remember the key points of the story, allowing the moral lesson to seep into the minds of the reader easily. One more rhetoric strategy used by the author is how she tries to relate to her audiences life. In the beginning of the last paragraph, the character’s (author’s) mom says,” You want to be the same as American girls on the outside.” What Amy does with this quote is try to connect with the audience most suited in reading this story. For instance, the text is in English and talks about situations most likely to happen to a teenage girl in America. This rhetorical strategy is very useful, because in this case the connection used to relate to the readers, is where the lesson becomes clear to the audience. This lets the readers be able to understand what the story is truly about much easier, and actually be able to apply the lessons learned from the story and use it in their daily lives. This story has a deep lesson behind it, involving current issues people face today. This story shows that even though people portray an image that may be appealing to society, they will still represent what culture they come from, on the inside.