In Amy Tan’s essay, My Mother’s Tongue, she takes on a very calm and informative tone. Throughout the essay she is trying to explain her background to the audience. She tells that she was frustrated but through her tone the reader can tell she is accepting of the situation and happy to be who she is.
It seems that for Tan, speaking, writing, and reading are not related to thinking as much as they are to each other. She talks about thinking to herself about speaking, writing, and reading, but mostly how she speaks. She notices the differences in how she speaks to one person, her mother, and other people in her life like her husband and big groups of people. She points out that she speaks differently to her mother than to other people because her mother does not speak as well as the others.
One reason I say that speaking, writing, and reading are fairly closely related in the mind of Tan is due to the end of her essay where she talks about her mother reading her book and says that it is easy to read (314). This shows that when things are written simply and can be read easily, even people who cannot speak too well can still understand it. I think Tan’s purpose in writing is for everyone to be able to enjoy her reading, not just people who are very well informed in the subject of English.
On the other hand, in Frederick Douglas’ essay, I felt like all of these elements are separate from one another. He can speak and think fairly well when he is little, but he still cannot read or write. He faces quite a challenge when learning to read because it is forbidden that anyone teach him. Then, even after he learns how to read, he still cannot write. He must work in the lumber yard to gain some knowledge. Then, he uses it to trick people into teaching him how to write. He has to take everything in steps to be able to do all of them which really illustrates how they do not all come together at one time and must be learned separately.
However, it is critical that Douglas is able to do all of these things perfectly to relate to his audience. If he could not read, write, speak, or think clearly, his audience would view him as ignorant and he would lose a lot of his credibility. However, he does it so well people think he must be an imposture (96).
He also uses a very sincere and optimistic tone in his essay. His sincerity shows that he wants to accomplish his goal of getting the audience to see that he is a well educated African-American who can write just as well as any White. Likewise, his optimism shows that he is determined and can do anything he sets his mind to.
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I think it's interesting that you think of reading, writing, etc., as separate for Douglass. It makes sense that reading and writing are on a different level from thinking and speaking, since as you say, "he can speak and think fairly well" as a child. But doesn't reading also lead to a new level of thinking for him? Perhaps a level of critical thinking? As soon as he is able to understand the written word, it's a though his own thinking has been unleashed.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you in the sincerity aspect, actually both authors are really sincere in the way they explain their essay to the audience, aren't they? I'm sure for Tan, writing about her mother in honesty like that was difficult, but she does it so well that it builds such ethos for her and the audience, at least to me it did. And, Douglas talked about how he learned from little kids, he largely revealed himself in that small excerpt.
ReplyDeleteI believe that Tan's thinking actually was affected by her speaking, writing, and reading. You say that they are more related to each other than thinking. That may be true, and it likely is easier to talk about them, for it's hard to be certain what someone thinks. But maybe the difficulties that she saw her mother having impacted her own thinking, though in a positive way, for she challenged herself to become very good in English. Also, she had to remember how to speak, write, and read to her mother in her mother's style, which--I will further assume--improved her comprehension of the language, what it means to her, and how she thinks about it.
ReplyDeleteI think Douglas is able to expand his thoughts once he learns how to read and write. I guess a better way of putting it would be that earlier on thinking and speaking were not so much related to reading and writing for him. Then, once he got older and learned how to read and write, all of this became more integrated for him.
ReplyDeleteI think this holds true for most people. When they're young the way they relate reading, writing, and thinking is much different from when they mature. Another thing is that reading and writing require a little bit less thought after using those skills over time because we become more familiar with them and some things become like second nature, such as where to put punctuation.
I agree with Brian's comment about Tan. Her thoughts about her mother's use of English as well as the way she had been taught affected the way she read things in English. As Tan points out, it also affected her writing skills. I feel like she kind of let it affect that because of her feelings on the issue.
ReplyDeleteI don't necessarily agree with you that reading, writing, and thinking are separate for Douglass. Like Ms. Henderson says, he uses reading and writing to develop his thinking, and it allows him to become a much more independent thinker.
I agree with your 2nd to last paragraph that it was essential for Douglass to appear very literate in order to get his purpose across.
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