ENGL 1101: Assignment 3 - Character Analysis and Comparative Study

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ENGL 1101 Assignment 3 Kahlon I
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ENGL 1101 Assignment 3 Kahlon II
Part A
1. How does the antagonist in the story you’ve chosen contribute to the story’s overall
meaning?
For this part, one of the most prominent works of Amy Tan- “Rules of Games” has
been chosen to discuss the contribution of the antagonist’s contribution to the overall
meaning of the story. The story revolves around a life of a little girl named Waverly Jong
who has been portrayed by the author as a Chinese American. The story has been caught
between the subtle power strife and the continual dilemmas between a daughter and mother.
The mother –Lindo Jong has played a character of antagonist in the whole story who is driven
by her preconceived notions aggravates the complications in Waverly’s life.
Amy Tan has cleverly built mom’s character as ‘tiger mom.’ She has been shown
telling her kids a lot many things to survive in the big world. In the beginning, she was shown
criticizing Americans and their rules and culture. In one instance, she used the word ‘lazy’ for
American and praising her native countrymen. She wanted her three kids to be raised under
the influence of Chinese culture. She has been seen manipulating her kids to do things that
please her and that she thinks are the best. As Waverly said in the story “My mother imparted
her daily truths so she could help my older brothers and me rise above our circumstances”
(Tan, and West, 16). She is very good at pedantic fault-finding that too in a passively-
aggressive way. The author has not given her a light touch as the mom has been seen
dropping the truth bombs with her bitter tongue “daily” (Tan, and West, 14). In the whole
story, one can see her putting her kids down. For instance, when in the very beginning
Waverly defeated her opponents and her mom join the crowd of the Chinese tourist and
whispered: "Is luck” (Tan, and West, 17) Furthermore, she kept telling her daughter “Next
time win more, lose less” (Tan, and West, 18). This shows what she expects from her kids
and through regular criticism, she tries to motivate them.

ENGL 1101 Assignment 3 Kahlon III
Mom started treating the achievements of Waverly in such a way that echoes her
values and upbringing. She used to take Waverly with her to the shopping and introduce
Waverly as her daughter to every stranger that comes to her sight. This has resulted in a
serious schism between mother and Waverly in the middle of shopping (Tan, and West, 19).
Mom instructed her other two kids to ignore Waverly completely when she comes for dinner
in order to teach her a lesson.
The whole story keeps highlighting mom’s micromanaging. Her actions have both
positive and negative consequences that have also been reflected in the story. At one hand,
they motivate her kids to gain important things and on the other, they resulted in some
conflicts with Waverly. Whether or not Waverly wants to, but she has completely soaked up
her mother’s character. Lindo’s influence drives the conflict in the motion as Waverly
opposed to being the part of mom's control plan and gradually she starts opposing her and
fights back.

ENGL 1101 Assignment 3 Kahlon IV
Part B
1. Using two stories, compare and contrast the protagonists’ isolation from the world
and the people around them.
In this section, a comparison is done based on the isolation faced by the protagonist
characters in the two different stories written by two master-class writers. The first story is
“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the other is “To Room Nineteen”
written by Doris Lessing. The former was written in the year 1892 and on which Lessing
responded with his one of the best works “To Room Nineteen.” Both are compared with each
other based on the acute style to the protagonist's madness.
In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator is made to live in a confined single room of
a huge estate, whereas her husband spends most of his time in cities and town doing his job.
She wrote, "John is away all day, and even some nights when his cases are serious” (Gilman,
649). The agitation keeps on piling up and caused ‘temporary nervous depression.” The
statement clearly shows the difference in the confinement and freedom of men and women in
the 19th century. She obeys her husband every time even if she feels uncomfortable. This can
be seen in many instances in the story. For example, she wrote that “He said that after the
wall-paper was changed it would be the heavy bedstead, and then the barred windows, and
then that gate at the head of the stairs, and so on” (Gilman, 649). Her loneliness and
depression were caused by her husband and society’s ignorance and childlike treatment.
These made her attention diverted towards the wallpaper’s pattern and made her too obsessed
with it that she imagined a trapped woman behind the wallpaper and wanted her to set free.
She imagined herself behind the wallpaper. Her madness can be understood from the lines
"I've got out at last," said I, "in spite of you and Jane. And I've pulled off most of the paper,
so you can't put me back!" (Gilman 656).

ENGL 1101 Assignment 3 Kahlon V
In Lessing’s work, the protagonist is not a narrator but rather he used an unnamed
writer to narrate the story. Unlike the protagonist of Gilman, Lessing's version of the
protagonist has some sort of freedom in the beginning. This has been shown ironically by the
use of the word "choose"- "Everything right, appropriate, and what everyone would wish for
if they could choose” (Lessing, 526). Lessing's protagonist exhibit some sort of selfishness as
she got bored with her family and duties as a mother and a wife. Susan gradually confined
herself into a family room just to have her own space and freedom. She changed room after
room in the anonymous hotel and ultimately got a sliver of happiness in hotel room number
19 (Lessing, 545). Comparing the two protagonists in the story, in Gilman's work, the
original impulse of the characters disappeared way before the story ends, whereas, in
Lessing's work, the intelligence appeared many times in the character. The two protagonists
in the aforementioned story retort to their up-thrust and demonstrated various ways to cope
with their loneliness and confinement.
In both stories, the protagonists experience some sort of agitated unrest and that
played a major role in their isolation from the rest of society and their personal lives. The
stories highlighted the critical aspect of 19th and 20th century i.e., how women's sickness is
being perceived in the male-dominated society.

ENGL 1101 Assignment 3 Kahlon VI
Works Cited
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Charlotte Perkins Gilman Reader: The Yellow Wallpaper,
and Other Fiction.” New York: Pantheon Books, 1980. 647-656
Lessing, Doris May. “To Room Nineteen.” Difusion, Centro De Investigación y
Publicaciones Idiomas.1993. 525-549
Tan, Amy, and Clare West. “The Joy Luck Club.” Oxford University Press, 2008. 14-20