“Rules of the Game” by Amy Tan

Hi, this is Lucy Liang.

The story is written in first person where our narrator, Waverly Place Jong, is a young girl growing up in a China Town.  Right from the beginning, the reader is brought into the environment rich of the Chinese American culture and traditions. They are a family of five, living in a small “two-bedroom flat right above a bakery”, there are crowded streets outside the window and a fresh fish market within walking distance. (498) Many traditional Chinese values are embedded in the story, such as “Bite back your tongue, wise guy, he not go against wind”, (497) “Better you take it, find out shy yourself”, (502) and one should be excused of other duties and focus on their specialty. These values that the mother introduced to her children have had great influence on the narrator’s life and her success in chess, but what the mother does not realize is the stress that some of these put on her daughter. As Waverly grows older, and starts to have her own thoughts and value, she feels constrained, pressured and embarrassed by her mother. In the last three paragraphs, “two angry black slits” refers to the mother, and we can see that now she has become the opponent of the daughter. Under the fear and pressure of her angry mother, the narrator uses the strategies of chess to tackle down the problem.