In Ken Liu’s short story “The Paper Menagerie” Jack, the main character, understanding of his identity change and develops through the author’s use of character’s dialogue, to shows the changes of our main character Jack, that related to the theme.
In this story, by comparing the dialogue between the protagonist Jack and other characters when they were young and now, it can be found that Jack’s views and himself have been changing over time. At the beginning of the story, Jack was still a sopping kid. From his mother’s unilateral conversation, he likes his mother making origami paper for him, which makes him happy. His change came from a conversation between him and his good friend Mark. At that time, Jake showed him his mother’s paper tiger, but Mark said “That doesn’t look like a tiger at all. Your Mom makes you toys from trash?” and threw it away “Here’s your stupid cheap Chinese garbage.” It made Jack feel very uncomfortable. He also felt that because his mother gave him a chink face, he was bullied. On the same day he returned home and asked his parents “Do I have a chink face?”, And his mother’s attitude has changed a lot, and she doesn’t even speak Chinese or eat Chinese food.