In American Born Chinese, Gene Yang employed images and composition to reveal how the conversation Greg condescended upon Jin left Jin feeling lonely and powerless because Jin believed that Greg was the more Alpha male and possessed more say on Amelia.
The similarity and difference in images of Greg and Jin testified that Jin knew Greg as more of an Alpha male than him and explained why Jin’s boiling response cooled off the moment he saw Greg. When Jin sat in the classroom and pounded over his earlier confrontation, he gradually built up confidence in himself. One could observe the self-esteem materializing in the form of lighting until he saw Greg, surrounded by the girl, dead center in the group, cool as ever and radiating more confidence …show more content…
In Sharon Old’s poem “Rites of Passage,” irony demonstrate a contrast between how the boys viewed themselves and how the narrator saw them by presenting what was not expected of the situation.
Situational irony revealed how the narrator perceived the boy’s nature as kids while acknowledging the boy’s assumed manhoods by claiming the boys were men while describing actions and details contrary to what were normally expected of men. Situational irony occurs whenever the outcome escaped anticipation. In this case, the narrator began with the guest arriving at her son’s birthday party, a common occurrence with kids. Then, she introduced the guest as “short men, men in first grade.” Obviously, the title of men assumed older age and maturity, and first grade failed to reach the expectation. By creating a discrepancy between expectation and reality, the narrator simultaneously drew the line between what the boys assumed of themselves and what she thought of them - men verse first graders. Furthermore, when the boys looked at their peers, rather than seeing “men”, they saw “themselves tiny in the other’s pupils.” Similarly, the difference in assumption and perception confirmed the fact that the speaker saw the “men” as kids. Of course, the narrator still pretended to play along with the kid's “manhood” while recognizing what was behind the cover-ups like all