Character Analysis: Wei-Chen

Jin Wang is embarrassed to even be apart of his family by the way he acts and how he represents their culture. He now can see how hard it is to fit in.

Our actions and interactions with others and society are what define us. Society’s perception of an individual may contrast with that individual’s perception of self. Our actions and interactions with others create certain stigmas which may not change despite progression and change an individual has undergone. But however at the end of the day we are our own creators and we chose who we interact with.

Stories and stereotypes make many people want to change themselves negatively and assimilate just to fit in with society. As time passes, society’s stereotypes for how people of each race should be, which race is more dominant than others, and which race you should be, all play a role in impacting someone’s self-esteem and their insecurities. This is portrayed through Jin Wang, a main character in Gene Luen Yang’s “American Born Chinese” when Jin Wang thinks his crush, Amelia, he instantly becomes happy. But then he thinks about Greg and Amelia together and gets mad. He finally zooms into Greg’s blond hair. The next day he goes to school with the same hairstyle. The hair symbolizes Greg’s all American identity because the stereotypical American is portrayed with blond hair and blue eyes. To Jin Wang, this hair symbolizes what he wants to be, so he changed his hair to an “American” hairstyle to get Amelia to like him. Due to stereotypes about how Americans are suppose to look like, Jin Wang feels insecure about himself and wants to change his identity and himself as well to assimilate into American culture and stereotypes. These stereotypes and the Anti-Asian stereotypes impact Jin Wang greatly and make him hate himself as well as his background and where he came from because he believes that in order to be AMerica, you have to be white. Another way that this is portrayed is from a personal experience I had as a kid. Growing up as an Asian kid in America, I didn’t really know

The witch trials in this play were based on actual events that happened in Salem in 1692. Arthur Miller’s 1953 The Crucible is a dramatization of the Salem Witch Trials. His reasoning for writing it was because everyone was hysteric about the Soviet Union and communism trying to make its way over to the United States. It was like a modern day witch hunt. In the play, Abigail Williams and a group of girls get caught in the woods. They were dancing and doing other things that puritan’s looked down upon. The girls were caught by Reverend Parris, and soon after his daughter became ‘ill’. The girls then started saying that witches came to them and told them to do bad things. They sent innocent people to hang. After studying Arthur Miller’s

In The Crucible by Arthur Miller, it takes place in Salem, Massachusetts during colonial America. Throughout the story a group of girls makes accusations a mass of people of practicing witchcraft, one of the worst crimes to commit during that period, and people are being sentenced to hang for denying witchery. In the Crucible there are many lessons that Arthur Miller wants to teach you. To me a lot of the lessons that were taught in this story are important but I feel like one of them is the most important. Arthur Miller demonstrates that one of the lessons implied in the story is people’s character and how it affects those people and others. Examples of character are Giles Corey, John Proctor, Abigail Williams.

Randy Pausch. Who is he? What does he stand for? The day he gave the last lecture... His last lecture he only had months to live. He packed a lot of lessons into his lecture. The claims he gave that stood out were to be optimistic, to be determined, and to take risks.

Brinker reared back arrogantly. “And who do you think I am!” But Finny hadn’t heard that. His face had broken into a wide and dazzled smile at what I had said, lighting up his whole face. “Enlist!” I drove on, “I wouldn’t enlist with you if you were Elliott Roosevelt.”

The Crucible is set in the seventeenth- century Salem, Massachusetts during the Salem witch trial. It starts of with Reverend Parris, a man very concerned about his reputation, accusing his orphaned niece Abigail Williams of taking part in witchcraft after his daughter is unconscious after dancing in the woods. A technique used by Parris is characterization, which utilizes the thoughts, actions and dialogues in the construction of characters. Arthur Miller uses characterization to build the character of Reverend Samuel Parris as arrogant , selfish, and deceptive.

At first he was characterized as being silent and and isolated , by the end of the story, he became more sure of himself and starting accepting/embracing his culture which shows the reader that he has finally learned the truth. Jin Wang who was bullied for being Chinese in a white American culture just wanted to fit in with the other white kids. He doesn't have any confidence in himself and is constantly worried with trying to fit in with his peers, which leads him to start changing things about himself. Over the course of the novel he becomes friends with Wei-Chen and has a crush on a girl named Amelia but both of those things end up turning left as he starts to realize more. There was one simple goal; to fit in.

Jin is an American born Chinese who is moving and experiencing life as a new kid in a new school...again. As we learn more about him through the chapters we notice that Jin doesn’t like that he is Chinese and would rather be the typical American so people wouldn’t treat him differently. Jin always tries his hardest to blend in with the other American students but he is always being placed in a stereotype, for example when he was first introduced to

One who succumbs under the harshness of facing adversity is Eliezer Wiesel. For instance, on his way to a concentration camp, he sees the bodies of babies and children being burned in a ditch: "For the first time, I felt revolt rise up in me. Why should I bless His name? The Eternal Lord of the Universe, the All-Powerful and Terrible, was silent. What had I to thank Him for?” (31). When Elie asks, “Why should I bless His name?”, after witnessing this catastrophe, his apostasy grows stronger. As he experiences the Nazis punishments, his ultimate trust in God diminishes into conflicts with what he should truly believe in. Furthermore, when Elie finally reaches the last concentration camp and wakes up, he thinks about looking for his missing father,

Throughout the memoir, Wiesel experienced a great deal of emotional trauma that led to change in character. One main instance of emotional trauma Weisel endured was with his father’s death. Early on in Night Wiesel promises himself, he will never leave his father and will do anything to keep him alive. You see his ideas begin to change at Buna. When his father was beaten by Idek and Franek, Elie could only watch in disbelief as he saw his father be beaten. However, he was not angry at the Kapos but at his father. He felt that his father was showing his weakness and in turn, that such weakness could put their chance of survival at risk. During the run to Gleiwitz, Eliezer saw Rabbi Eliahou’s son abandon his father. When Elie’s father died, crying out Elie’s name, he did not respond. Weisel later blamed himself for being too weak; “just like Rabbi Eliahou's son,” he had “not passed the test.”

Gene Luen Yang in his book called “American Born Chinese" he illuminates the book in three parts, which is three characters, three stories but one goal. It is a critically acclaimed graphic novel. It possesses strong themes of racial stereotypes, particularly American stereotypes of the Chinese and other East Asian ethnicities. The American Born Chinese also undergoes phases of identity crises that are coupled with some mental or physical transformation. Even though this book is mainly about Jin, the book actually starts with the story of the Monkey King. The book then switches to Jin's story in the second chapter and, for the third chapter, switches to the story of Danny (Jin's alter-ego). Only after Jin's and Danny's stories do we return

Well aside from their both being Chinese, Chin Kee is obviously more flawed than Jin, he is obnoxious and can be very annoying at times. There are even more passages from the text, like (Teacher) “Oh Romeo, oh Romeo.” (Chin Kee) “Wherefore art thou Romeo?” This is from the chapter where Chin Kee constantly annoys Danny by answering all of the questions the teacher asks, this is also a racist Asian stereotype, as in they are so smart that they get all the questions right. Another example is (Teacher) “The Nina, the Pinta and the?” (Chin Kee) “Santa Malia!”. Chin kee is an overall racist stereotype of an Asian person. I’m not sure why they would include the racist stereotype, other to make Chin Kee appear more annoying, disturbing and obnoxious. Unlike Jin, Chin Kee is annoying, although Jin is much easier to anger and has a short temper, while Chin Kee takes a while to anger and gives sufficient warning, as read in the final chapters. So, both characters have their differences, and in the end Jin caves in to his anger and learns that he shouldn’t just try to be someone else, but instead to be

Humans are the most intricate organisms in the world, but when broken down, their primal nature is displayed. Primal instincts that include the need to label and place people in groups or the need to follow a leader. Now, these tendencies are not detrimental to humans as a whole, as they are the traits that have kept us alive for millions of years, but these same instincts can be just as damaging as they are helpful. Humans are our worst enemy because of corruption in the government, war, and the need to group people.