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Michael Hafer
Professor Rigby
English 106-12
3-13-2018
“Identity Found in Conflict”
Amy Tan uses most of the elements of fiction to capture the reader’s attention in her story
“A Pair of Tickets.” However none of the elements are more intertwined in the story as conflict.
In the story the internal and external conflicts that June May comes in contact with reinforces
that being ignorant of ones roots makes a person miss out on an important part of their life.
June May is a Chinese American that grew up in San Francisco. In the beginning of the
story as June May and her father Canning Woo’s train heads to Shenzhen she starts to feel the
conflict she has been fighting for years bubble to the surface. As she puts the experience “I feel
the sink on my forehead tingling, blood rushing through a new course, my bones aching with a
familiar old pain,” this is her realizing that her mother was correct and she cannot suppress her
heritage. Adding to her internal conflict when June and her father arrive in Guangzhou she looks
around and sees that even though she is fully Chinese she stands out “I stand five-foot-six, and
my head pokes above the crowd so that I am eye level only with other tourists.”(Mays 305).
When Junes’ make-up comes off when reaching Hong Kong due to the heat and humidity may
also act as a symbol of her taking off her mask an revealing her true identity; her Chinese
identity by blood. Because of June not embracing her Chinese identity her mindset is that China
is poor third world country and is stunned when she arrives at the hotel they were staying at to
the point she says “ This is Communist China?” (Mays 308). Even when it came to eating she
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had the notion that they wanted Peking duck and chicken wrapped in clay, but they really wanted
hamburgers and French fries. It isn’t until the end of the story that June finally comes to
appreciate her heritage when she sees her twin sisters. The moment she has the epiphany she
says “And now I see what part of me is Chinese. It’s so obvious. It’s my family. It’s in our blood.
After all these years, it can finally be let go” (Mays 315).
All her life June May has denied and resented her Chinese heritage which ended in fights
with her mother .When the subject would come up her mother’s response was “Someday you
will see” (Mays 302) and “It’s in your blood, waiting to be let go” (Mays 302) with that June
described what she thought would happen like “transforming like a werewolf, a mutant tag on
DNA suddenly triggered, a cluster of telltale Chinese behaviors” (Mays 302). Not only did she
feel like a mutant changing into something she was not like a “Syndrome” she says a disease that
