“Rules of The Game” is a short story by Amy Tan, written about a Chinese girl named Waverly Place Jong. Her brother’s get a chess set for Christmas and she would have to bribe them to let her play with them and little did they know, she would turn out to be a chess prodigy. Throughout the story she faces many obstacles including her mom’s constant boasting about her and how good she is at chess, and this really angers Waverly because she felt like her mom was trying to control her life and live through her. Amy Tan, in her short story warns that parents should never try to live through their children because it never has a good outcome.
Amy Tan is a Chinese-American novelist who was born in Oakland, California on February 19th, 1952. Amy currently lives in Chinatown in San Francisco which is also where her story takes place. She is most famous for her story “The Joy Luck Club” which was adapted into a movie and is about the relationship between Chinese women and their Chinese-American daughters.
Her living in San Francisco’s Chinatown plays a major role of her theme of the story. Throughout this story we find out that Waverly and her mom don’t have the strongest bond, and in real life Amy and her mom don’t either so that helps her with her story. After Waverly runs away and then comes home for dinner her brother tries talking to her about what happened and her mom says ‘We not concerning this girl. This girl not have concerning for us,”(Tan, pg.5) her mom is telling her brother not to worry about Waverly because she doesn’t worry about them because if she did she wouldn’t of ran away like that.
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Amy Tan’s stories are based off of the realism era. Throughout her story she shows the realism of mother daughter relationship and how they are never perfect and that its okay to have conflict. She also wrote her story during a postmodern time and this really helps us understand the meaning because it’s more relatable. She also writes about things that occur in today’s society like conflict between mother/daughter relationships.
Waverly is tired of her moms boasting, so she tells her ‘I wish you wouldn’t do that, telling everybody I’m your daughter.'(Tan, pg.5), even though her mom was just being proud of Waverly, she turned it into something that’s embarrassing and in today’s society a lot of people do that to.
Amy Tan, in the story “Rules of The Game”, is trying to teach us that parents should never try and live through their children because it doesn’t have a outcome that anyone will like. This theme is really relevant today because anyone can see it happen anywhere and everywhere. For example, parents will push their children to work very hard at school and make good grades, because they weren’t capable themselves to do so.
In this story Waverly gets into an argument with her mom, and she says, “Why do you have to use me to show off? If you want to show off, then why don’t you learn to play chess?'(Tan, pg.5), when Waverly says this she telling her mom to stop trying to through her and to stay in her own lane. This idea will be one that will never go away because it’s been happening for centuries and will continue to happen.
In conclusions, people should never live through another person, because it won’t turn out the way they would hope to. In the story “Rules of The Game”, Amy Tan shows us the importance of a mother/daughter relationship, and people should value it. Also how nobody should ever be embarrassed by someone who is proud of them.
