Running head: WHERE THE GODS FLY
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Analysis of Jean Kwok’s ‘Where the Gods Fly’
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WHERE THE GODS FLY
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Analysis of Jean Kwok’s ‘Where the Gods Fly’
Imagine the situation of an immigrant in an entirely foreign land with an utterly different
culture and language. It is the reality that besets the many families that move to live in any
foreign country. They become exposed to a substantial cultural influence that threatens to strip
them of their traditional indigenous ways. Consequently, it may end up making the people lose
their cultural identity. In relation to this, Jean Kwok uses the “Where the Gods Fly” to
demonstrate such a situation (Kwok, 2012). Jean Kwok depicts the story of a mother and her
passionate daughter where the immigrant mother who fails to integrate well with the new world
of her daughter. With the help of her religion, she makes a decision that seeks to relieve her
daughter from the claws of the world that seems to deprive her of her culture.
In the story, there is the Chinese’s mother with her unwelcoming approach to her
daughter’s passion for the ballet dance. The story builds up from a first persona perspective with
consideration to the mother’s worldview. The family migrated to the USA together with their
daughter at such a time when Pearl was still in her infancy. The shift between grammatical tenses
forms the fundamental structure of the story’s plot. In the present tense of the narrative, the
mother engages herself in some religious mind state as she prays to particular spirits regarding
her daughter’s case. For instance, she shared that “ah, Amitabha, Buddha of great compassion, I
whisper...” (Kwok, 2012). In this state of meditation, she finds herself thinking about their life
transformation from the time they moved in from China.
As a result, these scenes unfold in the story in the form of past tense. On the other hand,
the enunciation of the story is set in a way of exposition using the present tense. In this reference,
the story introduces us to the narrator’s situation as the primary conflict of the short story. The
mother wants to go ahead and take Pearl out of the ballet school of dance. Nevertheless, the
WHERE THE GODS FLY
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teachers at the ballet school protest against the mother’s decision to take her daughter out of the
ballet school. They claim that Pearl has an extraordinary talent that would be subject to waste if
she is out of school. To find an argument to her claims, she looks back into her life when she
arrived in the American world. Desperately, she tries to find a reason for letting her daughter
attend the ballet classes.
With regards to this situation, the story is set in the past tense. However, she sees Pearl’s
pursuit of ballet dance occupation as the primary reason for her blemish. On many occasions,
when Pearl’s mother starts to reflect on her past life she uses the past tense. For example, she
tends to question one of her teacher's insight that if Pearl focused more on the ballet it could
result in getting a college scholarship. In the narration, we can correlate the relationship of the
mother with her religious status as the story develops and intensifies. It gives a clear relationship
between her past and her present spiritual life. It serves as the stimulation to her thoughts in the
whole course of the story. The parallelism between her past and present states reminds her of
Pearl. The pinnacle of the story emanates from the evil winds that begin to form at such a time
when Pearl was in the eighth grade.
At the same time, Pearl auctioned for the other ballet school that was apparently
considered the most legendary of the time. Pearl’s mother uses the concept of religion to indicate
a plot change at this instance. It is the first time in the story that the mother can see her daughter
dancing. In effect, it gives her a revelation that she has lost her daughter to the outside world.
She is very reluctant to embrace her daughter’s course of action. In fact, she states that she felt
like grabbing her and running out of the room. She felt like the universe was on the verge of
depriving her of her daughter. However, there was so little she could do because her husband
was very ill, and also she had some superstitious affiliation. Good to note, towards the end of the