Parents Should not Sacrifice Sheir Children for Their Own Dreams

In the short story The Unforgetting by Samantha Chang, a Chinese couple and their child immigrate to Iowa hoping to chase the American dream  a better life. The three of them appear to be very distant from each other and it is quite evident that this gap is partially influenced by the parents and their son Charles’s different experiences in language usage and assimilation. When the teacher notices that Charles is lagging behind in vocabulary and his learning, she demanded form his parents to stop speaking Chinese at home.

Charles’s father Ming was aware of the imminent danger of losing his son between the two languages (representing diverse cultures), but he willingly accepts the request to stop speaking Chinese in their house for a few months and Charles gradually abandons speaking their mother tongue. As they never tested Charles, Ming never knew how long it took for his son to forget Chinese words totally.

To achieve the favored life Ming forsakes his dream of being a well known scientist and starts a job as a photocopier repairman. At the same time, Charles succeeds greatly in academics, thus enabling himself to graduate away from his homestead. Suddenly, Sansan and Ming Hwang acknowledged that they had neither solace nor burden, except each other’s company. This paper with the assistance of https://specialessays.com/buy-a-response-reaction-paper/  shall highlight the importance of culture as a unifying bond in a family facing new values and norms, with special reference to the short story The Unforgetting.

Hole in the House

It is not far-fetched to fathom that language is a very strong reflection of patriotism. In this story the English-speaking teacher, despite the knowledge that Charles would one day speak English fluently even if he spoke Chinese at home, insists on his parents avoiding speaking Chinese. It is apparent that the very act of being able to speak English is perceived as nationalistic and, perhaps, as an affirmation of citizenship. In the short story I, both Charles’ parents and his teacher unconsciously concur with this point of view.

It is apparent that most parents, including Ming and his wife, are willing to make many sacrifices and face a tremendous trial of immigration to the United States, hoping to give their children a better life. In The Unforgetting it is clear that the sacrifices that Charles’s parents make are never fully appreciated by their son and consequently this forms a rift between them.

Parents strive to create a certain life for their children and have a path in their minds on how they think they can help their children to achieve their goal. The short story results in children feeling caged by their parents myopic expectations, and thus they resist them. In their turn, the parents make out this resistance as the ingratitude for their sacrifices. In The Unforgetting Ming fathoms some of the things that he left for shimmering, yellow Iowa Light. He is also bothered by the act of his son locking the door, he even had a nightmare about it later on. Apparently, the locked door symbolizes the rift between Ming and Charles, emanating from the ambivalence over the cultures. Ming’s frantic effort to salvage his relationship with his son ends up pushing him even further away. The last blow hits the family when Charles is accepted in Harvard. Ming cannot fathom why his son would relish the idea of studying in an institution that is so far away from home while there were universities located much closer to their home in Iowa. The parent is so absorbed in what he desires for his son that he entirely loses the sight of what his son wants for himself. What did you expect? she asked, “Sons in this country leave their parents and make their own homes, with their women”. Her voice was tense, accusatory. Sansan revisits this when she says, Isn't this what you wanted for him? That he should become like them?. Charles' father seems to feel despondent and of two minds. On the one hand, he sacrificed his dreams to provide a better life for his son, but on the other hand, he does not want Charles to have such a life at the price of totally discarding the roots. The short story highlights the difficulty second-generation children have reconciling the two cultures at some point they will be coerced to pick, and usually they opt for the American way.

Chang highlights the rifts that exist between immigrants and their children caused by the different degree of willingness to assimilate into the new culture. Such a gap is hard to fill unless one party is ready to compromise. Unfortunately, in this story neither the parents nor the child are prepared to look for an understanding, and this threatens to break down the family.

In the short story The Unforgetting, Samantha Chang accentuates how immigrants on the one side strive to create a certain life for their children, but on the other side they are not willing to accept a total transformation of the children’s lives. This short story results in children cut off from their roots, and parents feeling unappreciated It is clear that the children of immigrants are torn between two cultures that threaten to break down family bonds and end up with their assimilation into the American society.