This narrative demonstrates achievements and limitations of the different cultures in upbringing children. Secondly, she sees the manner in which Sophie is being raised as unworthy contrary to Natalie’s perspective. Firstly, she accuses the Shea family, who are Irish, of taking life jokingly as all what John does is going to the gym instead of looking for a job and provide for the family. The narrator who is Chinese believes that the Irish culture is no way better than her culture, making her ethnocentric. It reveals how older people are old-fashioned and how they fail to keep pace with a dynamic society. On reading the story, one can ultimately feel the angles a grandmother hold towards her household. The story is narrated from the perspective of a grandmother who interestingly justifies the difference between the Irish and the Chinese culture. The story ends with the narrator wondering how she had raised her beautiful daughter well, and now she has defied the odds and failed to take her advice. She is so bitter with her mother that she does not consider her as a source of support anymore. Natalie realizes that the narrator has been mistreating herĭaughter by canning her, and this hurts their mother-daughter relationship. They take her out of the hole and realize that she has bruises on her skin. They go to the playground to fetch her and calmly John–Natalie’s husband–finds out that Sophie is asleep. She gives up and decides to go home without Sophie, where she meets her angry parents. She uses a stick to provoke Sophie to cry, but the efforts bare no fruits. She goes silent which leaves the narrator confused whether she is dead or asleep. Knowing that she has done an offense that would cause her being spanked, Sophie does not come out of the foxhole. Since the narrator cannot fit in the foxhole, she begs Sophie to come out of the hole. One day Sophie hides in a foxhole with a spade full of sand, and as soon as the narrator goes to look for her, she throws it against her. Sophie fears her grandmother and develops contempt towards her. Natalie on her side does not take heed to her mother’s culture and has let it go off the air. Out of this, she never takes off her clothes in fear of being spanked. Then, she spanks Sophie, and at this point, she pays attention to her instructions. She tries to lure Sophie to wear her clothes, but all goes in vain. Sophie adopts the behavior of going naked, which the narrator does not encourage. She is disappointed by the way her granddaughter grows up accustomed to the American culture and wishes she could instill the Chinese way of living in her. The narrator is helping her daughter Natalie raise her granddaughter Sophie. I tell daughter, we do not have this word in Chinese, supportive”, (Jen, 1999). Mother help daughter mother ask, anything else I can do? Otherwise daughter complain mother is not supportive. This, for instance, is seen as quoted from the story where she says, “in China, daughter take care of mother. She compares the Chinese way of life with the American way and finds the latter way more messed up. “Who’s Irish” by Gish Jen is a short story that narrates how a 68-year-old Chinese immigrant struggles to get used to the ways of the American family.
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