The Voice from the Wall By: Amy Tan

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The Voice from the WallBy Amy Tan

• Presented by Sheena Brown Kamyla Franklin

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Summary

• Amy Tans The Voice from the Wall is the story
  of a young girl and her family. Lena St. Clair,
  who is half Chinese, half American, lives with
  her parents in Oakland. Her father eventually
  gets a promotion to sales supervisor of a
  clothing manufacturer. After her fathers
  promotion, Lena and her family move to and
  Italian neighborhood in North Beach, San
  Francisco. Lena soon learns that her mother was
  not happy with the apartment (Tan 311). One day
  when her and her mother are out grocery shopping,
  a Chinese man scares her mother and that is kind
  of like the turning point in the story. Her
  mother immediately begins rearranging things in
  the house when they return home because she feels
  that they are imbalanced. Lena soon learns that
  her mother feels like that because she is
  expecting a new baby. Her mother had to change
  around in Lenas room because she had to put the
  crib in there. This was when Lena had her bed
  moved up against the wall and this was the start
  of her hearing the voices coming from the
  apartment next door. She imagined that it was a
  mother killing her child when they were actually
  just arguing every night. Lena soon meets
  Teresa, her next door neighbor, when she comes to
  their door after her mother has kicked her out.
  When the girl left and went back home, Lena
  wondered how she could go back being that her
  life was so terrible. In the end, Lena finally
  changed her way of viewing things. She had a new
  insight on things in life.

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Major Characters

• Lena St. Clair The daughter and narrator of the
  story half Chinese, half American very curious
  and claims that she saw things that other kids
  didnt heard voices from the wall and imagined
  terrible things but found out the truth later on
  very fearful of things
• Betty St. Clair Lenas mother declared a
  displaced person when released from the Angel
  Island Immigration Station her name was changed
  by her husband in her immigration papers very
  mysterious saw danger in everything ( Tan
  309) spoke Mandarin and very little English
  eventually went crazy after the death of her
  child
• The father Lenas dad English/Irish man who is
  married to Betty St. Clair sometimes puts words
  into his wifes mouth because he doesnt
  understand what she is saying never worries
  about things naïve to certain truths in his
  life
• Teresa Lenas next door neighbor very
  rebellious against her mother loud friendly
  towards Lena in the end

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Critical Questions

• What is the significance of the title?
• The title represents what happens in the story.
  Lena hears voices from the wall. The voices that
  she hears are coming from her next door
  neighbors apartment. She hears them arguing all
  the time and imagines that the mother is killing
  her daughter when in reality, they are only
  having a confrontation.
• How is the story told?  Who is the narrator? 
  What perspective is used?  What is the tone of
  the language?  Is the narrator reliable?
  
• The story is told from Lenas perspective in
  first person point of view. Lena is the narrator
  of this story and her tone of language varies as
  the story goes on. In the beginning, her tone of
  language is mysterious and creepy. Eventually,
  that tone changes to her being worried and in the
  end, her tone is happy. In our opinion, we do
  think that the narrator is reliable because she
  tells the story from her point of view and how
  she sees everything.

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Questions Continued

• Look closely at the opening and ending.  On what
  does the author and narrator focus?
  
• In both the beginning and end of this story, the
  author and narrator focus on the deaths of people
  around them. In the beginning, it was the death
  of the beggar. In the end, it was the death of
  the baby and Lena imagining her next door
  neighbors killing each other.
• How does the character transform in the story?
• Lena goes from being this scary girl to someone
  who realizes the bigger things in life. She
  looks at the world from a different perspective
  after she goes through certain things.
• What is the major theme of the story? 
  Explicate.  Are there any minor themes?
  
• The major theme of this story opening your eyes
  to see the truth of reality. We did not find any
  minor themes in this story.
  

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Questions Continued

• Are there any allusions in the story that could
  add meaning to your interpretation?
  
• One allusion that we found in the story was how
  her mother kept making references to her meeting
  a bad man and having a baby that she didnt want.
  I think that this was a representation of her
  warning her daughter to be careful of the people
  she meets and hangs around because there are so
  many evil people in the world. Another allusion
  in this story was when Lena said that her father
  did not see the things she saw when her mother
  became pregnant. Her mother began to bump into
  things, into table edges as if she forgot her
  stomach contained a baby, as if she were headed
  for trouble instead. She did not speak of the
  joys of having a new baby she talked about a
  heaviness around her, about things being out of
  balance (Tan 313). We interpreted this as a way
  of Lenas mother showing that she had a baby that
  she didnt want because she was doing things to
  endanger the health of the baby. Once the baby
  was born, it did not live because it had no
  brain. I guess that this meant that her mother
  had caused this by bumping into these table
  edges.

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Questions Continued

• What are the symbols or other figurative elements
  in the story?
  
• The old woman on the street was a symbol of what
  would happen to Lena if she ever met a bad man
  and had a baby that she didnt want. Her
  fathers promotion could be thought of as a
  symbol of them being able to begin a new life
  from the one they had in Oakland.
• What seems to be the author's primary
  goal/purpose in writing this short story?
  
• The primary goal/purpose in writing this story is
  to show how some people let the imaginations run
  wild. They allow themselves to believe things
  that are only figments of their imagination
  although they know that it is more than likely
  not even true.
• What is your reaction to this story?  How does
  your reaction influence your reading?
  
• Our reaction to the story was that both of us
  were left feeling kind of confused in the end.
  We had a sense of what had happened in the story
  but we were left wondering why the author and
  narrator consistently seemed to want to focus on
  letting her imagination run wild. Certain points
  in the story made it hard to comprehend and
  overall, it was sort of confusing.

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