Reflection on "Fish Cheeks"

             Well, first of all, I really enjoyed this story. This story was able to express its idea effectively in one page. And what I liked most about the story is the way of writing her experience: showing.

             Definitely, this story is about confessing. It talks about the embarrassing (but after all valuable) experience of a young Chinese girl. However, in this story, only few sentences revealed her feelings explicitly (ex) “Dinner threw me deeper into despair”, “What would Robert think of our shabby Chinese Christmas?”, “I wanted to disappear” are some of the few sentences that explicitly show the narrator’s feeling.) The essay consists of only one or two sentences of explanation and a bunch of sentences of depiction of the situation.

             But ironically, by simply showing what she experienced, Amy Tan was able to impress the readers far more powerfully than by explaining what she felt indirectly. By imagining the situation the narrator described, readers can share the narrator’s experience indirectly. Mere description can make readers get “persuaded” (so to speak) more naturally than explicit explanation. As this story is a story which the narrator confesses about the lesson she realized from her youth experience, it would be important for the writer to appeal her confession to the readers. In that perspective, Amy Tan was successful in writing this story.

             To sum up, I was definitely attracted to this story and I think the reason why I was fascinated is that this story used the method of “showing” rather than “telling”. I should employ this method when writing a story or a college essay as far as I can.

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Jingyeong: I just simply organized the summary at the first part of my reflection, because I couldn’t think of much broader ideas. But reading your reflection, I guess you got several interesting points to be detailed. What I don’t understand is the goal of the author. I mean, persuading has its goal in it. Then, what is the goal of the author?

Chonghyun Ahn: I do agree that her indirect description of what she felt “showed” than “tell” about what happened. Good luck on your story and college essay.

Rhee Ji Yoon: I agree that showing is usually more important than telling. I am in the Creative writing class taught by Mr. Garrioch, and I realized that the stories that are less complicated but more descriptive are more powerful than the ones that are sophisticated. “Little Prince” is a very easy story, but you can learn a lot while reading it. (+Do you sympathize more with the Little Prince or the pilot?)