Tradition is normally used in connection with culture and to keep a culture healthy and alive, it is important to allow traditions to stay alive as well. However traditions that place restrictions on personal, professional, emotional or spiritual growth tend to have a negative impact on entire humankind and must therefore not be followed. When traditions are not followed, they die a natural death. Bad traditions must not be kept alive either through personal struggle or collective rebellion.
Two Kinds is one story of unproductive traditions that teaches us why some traditions are negative and hence must die. Not all traditions help in keeping a culture alive, some traditions tend to lend bad reputation to a culture and only cause culture degeneration. Two kinds by Amy Tan is one of the most heart-wrenching stories about a girl's difficult relationship with her mother. The sheer transparency of emotions can leave readers in a state of awe as poor Ni Kan suffers from her mother's unreasonable demands. She wants to be a child, she doesn't want to be a "genius" and thus chooses to rebel against an excessively overbearing mother. Despite all her mother's desires, I feel it was Ni Kan who was right in her desire not to be obedient because through personal struggle she was trying to end a bad tradition. Every person has the right to live their lives according to their own wishes and dreams instead of following someone else's instructions all the time. By asserting herself, Ni Kan saved herself from the misery that had been ruining her childhood and could possibly destroy her adolescence as well. Self-assertion is a valuable trait when practiced against tyrannical influences and traditions. The one thing which is quite wrong with parenting today is that children are forced to listen to their parents. Obeying parents at the cost of one's own happiness must never be the shining principle of parenting. It completely destroys a child's personality and may even make them more disruptive as they seek to assert themselves. They can also start thinking that parents do not like them the way they are as Ni Kan says in the story, "Why don't you like me the way I am. I am not a genius." (p. 261) Instead we should teach children to pay attention to their parents' guidance and then use their own minds to make decisions for themselves but unfortunately for Ni Kan, her mother couldn't understand her desire to assert herself. By giving them a chance to make their own decisions, we teach them responsibility and make them more rational and intelligent beings. We can help them build confidence in themselves by respecting their choices. Parents must act like maps that provide the basic guideline of the location but they do not need to push them onto a certain road towards a destination of their choice. Instead they should show children all the possible ways they can explore their talents and then let them choose the direction and the destination. This is one tradition that needs to be inculcated in all cultures and Ni Kan was a rebel who knew that she did not have to follow her mother's dictates because she had all the right to carve her own destiny.
In the same manner, we find another example of negative tradition in the story The Lottery by Shirley Jackson where the author shows what happens when people stop raising objections to blatant acts of injustice. It initially might appear to communicate no real purpose at first. People of a small town gather to celebrate an annual event called "the lottery." They greet each other cordially as if this is a normal event or maybe even a jovial one. The reader expects the winner of the lottery to win a prize like in an ordinary lottery event but it is only at the end that they realize the pernicious...
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