In Ken Liu’s short story “The Paper Menagerie” Jack’s, the main character, understanding of his identity changes and develops through the author’s use of Characterization, Symbols, and  Point of view. By the time, the environment and the mind of people around him already affect him. Thus, he changed the cultures he admired, the way he thought about different cultures, and he changed his perspective of himself.

In Ken Liu’s short story, “The Paper Menagerie,” the main character, Jack, develops his understanding of identity through the author’s use of dialogue.  “At dinner, I asked Dad, ‘Do I have a chink face?’” and then the mother said, “Sha jiao chink?” It’s just two short sentences, but it shows a lot of information. The chink face means Jack is self-abasement because he has a face that contains some Chinese genes. Jack is not really like his Chinese face. The sentence that is said by his mom includes Chinese words and shows that she is not good at English. There is a big cultural difference between mom and Jack, which is Jack hates Chinese culture, and mom is a native Chinese. That’s why there is a huge conflict appear between them. In addition, “I pushed the chopsticks and the bowl before me away: stir-fried green peppers with five-spice beef. ‘We should eat American food.’ Dad tried to reason ‘A lot of families cook Chinese sometimes.’ ‘We are not other families.’ I looked at him. Other families don’t have moms who don’t belong.” The American food again shows his dislikes of Chinese culture.  In Jack’s mind, other family means all the family members are native American, but his family has a Chinese who doesn’t belong here. These words are filled with Jack’s indignation and denial of Chinese culture. In the whole article, the author did not directly describe Jack’s mind but showed the changing of his understanding of identity from the details of his dialogue with his family.