Jake Paucar 

Professor Nochomovitz 

Fiqws10115-10015

01 March 2023

The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu 

This short story “The Paper Menagerie” by the author Ken Liu is very interesting to read about because of how much Jack goes through in the story which has  a bigger impact towards his mother and the relationship they have together. His relationship with his mother is stronger compared to his dad because of the time they spend together and the way they interact. Jack never see’s how much his mom really cares for him, not seeing what she does everyday for him or the little things she does so he could feel better. Overtime his mother passes away because of cancer that she had which makes him not fully understand her side of the story because of the actions he has taken growing up, he never saw her as a loving or caring person because of an accident that led him to become a different kind of person and made him act a different type of way towards his family. It’s important because it shows us how much you should appreciate what you have right now, spending time with the person you love and care about the most because at the end of the day you will never know when is their last day here. However Jack hasn’t paid attention to any of those things which makes him miss out. 

Body paragraph 1

  Throughout the story Jack’s mother used to make paper animal origami when Jack was a little child, making him believe that they can move and do what animals do because the only way it was alive was cause his mother created it. When she created the paper animal, “Look, a tiger. She put her hands down on the table and let go. A little paper tiger stood on the table, the size of two fists placed together”, (pg. 26). It was the first creation Jack had a connection with and believed it was real in his world. Although he had an interaction with a kid called Mark who is his neighbor which left a bad impression towards him because Mark is an American kid and thinks having action figures is a better toy because he “shows me your toys” and then Jack shows his paper menagerie Laohu. Mark then wasn’t impressed at all and talked bad about the paper menagerie, “That doesn’t look like a tiger…your mom makes toys…from trash”(pg. 31), and then Laohu broke the lightsaber which then Jack was laughing and causing Mark to break Laohu in half and throwing it at Jack. However Jack then thinks of the things that has happened to him which leads to the paper menageries away in a box in the attic.

Body paragraph 2

  Jack’s relationship with his mother goes to a turn which is what caught my attention the most because of how close the relationship was and how it can just go down hill. Jack then says “If Mom spoke to me in Chinese I refused to answer”(pg. 33), he later doesn’t listen or talks to his mother, he gets annoyed when his mother talks to him in Chinese. He later grows ups and forgets about att of that but his mother is getting ill because she has cancer, they talk and his mother expressing her love towards him, she then passed away and they go back to the house they used to live and Jack’s girlfriend finds the box with paper menagerie in the attic. She places the paper menagerie all around their house, he later sees it “filled with Chinese characters”(pg. 38) but he never knew how to read in Chinese so he goes to a Chinese tour bus stop and a lady helps him by reading it out loud to him. Jack mother expresses her story how she was an immigrant from “Sigulu Village” and had escape from their because of an revolution war that was going on, she goes on about her story and how she meet her father but at the end she expresses herself saying how he brought light towards, she was so happy he was born and it was the best thing that ever happened to her. She wrote this letter because Jack wasn’t speaking to her making her feel bad and the only way to talk to him was by writing in the paper menagerie.

  CONCLUSION

  Therefore it shows to us that Jack never saw how much his mother truly loved him until she passed away causing him to question himself. He was too in depth of how other people see him because of the language he spoke or the toys he had, was embarrassed of his mother because she spoke Chinese instead of English, didn’t talk that much and let that accident have an impact and see her in a different way. In the end he couldn’t talk to her anymore, the only thing that was left was the paper menagerie with her writing inside it. It shows to us how much you should appreciate the one that cares and loves you the most because you never know when it’s their last day here on earth. Living in regret is the worst because you never figure out what you had to do, or wished it was different and I know Jack wished he wasn’t bad towards his mother because of the way he took the letter for a lady can read it and he refolded it to Laohulo leaving the writing to be with him and the paper menagerie to go back how it was in the start.