“My Son's Big Doll” Vs. “I Love Mary”

“My Son's Big Doll” Vs. “I Love Mary”
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Huan Chu-Ming has built a reputation as a prolific writer. “My Son’s Big Doll” and “I Love Mary” cement Chu-Ming’s status as a Taiwan xiangtu writer. The two stories examine the lives of the Taiwanese people from an insider’s perspective. In “My Son’s Big Doll” a Taiwanese man, Kunshu takes on a job as a sandwich man by wearing a signboard with advertisements to provide for his family. Kuen-Shu is the village “adman” in the line of business of walking around with a billboard. While Kuen-Shu struggles with the job, he must keep it because his family depends on it. Towards the end of the story, Kuen-Shu gets a promotion where he does not need to walk around with billboards. However, his son cannot recognize him in the current form, and he is forced to wear his makeup for the son to recognize him. In “I love Mary,” the story talks about a Taiwanese man who takes the responsibility of caring for his American boss’s German shepherd dog, when the boss and his wife decide to return to their home country. David, as he wants to be called is happy to take over the responsibility of the dog. He is anxious to emulate the American’s way of life and is happy to care for the animal at any cost. However, the reality dawns on David when the dog starts destroying the family, something that it had done to the relationship of the previous owners. David loses his wife and children as he tries to do whatever it takes to care for the dog. This essay compares and contrasts the two works.[Du, Willy Chenja. Taiwan Xiangtu writer Huang Chunming] [Hillenbrand, Margaret. Literature, modernity, and the practice of resistanc]
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Identify crisis
The theme of identity problems cuts across the two works. In “I Love Mary,” Dawei Shunde adopts the same Dawei Chen because he is a worker at one of Taipei’s foreign establishments. Mr. Shunde alters the convenience for foreign employers. The English-speaking Chinese and foreigners would call him David. Dawei was okay with being called David. However, he had issues when his Chinese counterparts referred to him using his official name, Mr. Dawei Shunde. When someone called him Shunde, he would pretend he had not heard. If the person was persistent, he would turn around and respond with a level of embarrassment. Sometimes, when someone used his official name, Dawei would respond that he was unaware the person was addressing him. Such a reaction demonstrates that Dawei was absorbed into the American culture to the extent of preferring an English name to his native Chinese name. The extent to which Dawei feels embarrassed by his official name demonstrates that he has lost his identity. He is not proud of who he is as a Taiwanese and instead feels that he belongs more to the American culture. Working in a foreign establishment has caused Dawei to develop an identity crisis where he is torn between two extremes.[Anselmi, Dina L., Janet Bauer, Jack Chatfield, Daniel G. Blackburn, Andrew J. Gold, Priscilla Kehoe, Paul Lauter et al. Race and racism in theory and practice. Pg. 173.] [Chu-Ming....