WINTERBLOSSOM GARDEN PROSE ANALYSIST

“ Winterblossom Garden ”

by David Low

Synopsis

Winterblossom garden tell the family love, the young man love photographing  so much who visits his parents` restaurant for taking picture of  his father.  Unfortunately, his father  refused it cause he was busy at the moment. In this short story also exposed the father struggle came to America illegally and then to be like today he own his businesses. The young childhood was happy although he doesn`t have chinese friends.When he was growing up his parent spent most of their days in Winterblossom Garden. Before going home after school he would stop at the restaurant . The unique from this family is the parents agreed to speak only Chinese in their son presence, but his mother often broke this rule when her husband wasn`t. They are Chineses but they prefer to live in Winterblossom Garden where predominantly German. The parents assumed that as long as their son ate well everything would be fine.  The mother did not live in a food-enough age; as a result, she thinks food is important to everyone, and we have to treasure the food. It seems like she is obsessed with food is in the story. Because she understood the feeling of starvation, so she does not want her son to have that feeling.  Besides Mom and son's opinion toward food, here also tell about mom and son's attitude toward marriage, and the photograph which is the connection and salvation between mom and son. Hard condition might face of this family when the father get sick, then everything is changed.

Exposition

This story is about love, the love that holds a family together. It concerns the love between a son and his parents, and the love of  a man and a woman that genarates the family love.

            I have no photographs of my father. One hot Saturday in June, my camera slung over my shoulder, I take the subway from Greenwich Village to Chinatown. I switch to the M  local which becomes an elevated train after it crosses the Williamsburg Bridge. I am going to Ridgewood , Queens, where I spent my childhood. I sit in a car that is almost empty, I feel the loud rumble of the whole train through the hard seat. Someday I think, wiping the sweat from my face, they`ll tear this el down, as they`ve torn down the others.

I get off at my Fresh Pond  Road and walk the five blocks from the station to my parents`restautant. At the back  of  the store in the kitchen. I find my father packing an order . White cartons of food fit neatly into a brown paper bag. As the workers chatter in Cartonese, I smell the food cooking, spare ribs, chicken lo mein, sweet and pungent pork, won ton soup. My father , who has just turned seventy-three, wears a wrinkled white short –sleeve shirt and cheap maroon tie, even in this weather . He dabs his face with a handkerchief.

“Do you need money?” he asks in Chinese, as he takes the order to the front of the store. I notice that he walks slower than ususal . Not that  his walk is ever very fast, he usually walks quiet assurance, a man who knows who he is and where he is going. Other people will just have have to wait until he gets there.

“Not this time,” I answer in English. I laugh. I haven`t borrowed money from him in years but he still asks. My father and I have almost always spoken different languages.

“I want to take your picture, Dad.”

“Not now, too busy. He hands the customers the order and rings the cash register.

“It will only a minute.”

He stand relucantly beneth the green awning in front of the store, next to the gold-plated letter on the window. I look through the camera viewfinder. “ Smile,” I say.

Instead my father holds his left hand with the crooked pinky on his stomach. I have wondered about that pinky; is it a souvenir of some street fight in his youth.? He wears a jade ring on his index finger. His hair, streaked with gray, is greased down as usual; his face looks a little pale. Most of the day, he remains at the restaurant. I snap the sutter.

            “Go see your mother,” he says slowly in English.

Complication

My mother pours two cups of tea from the porcelain teapot that has always been in its wicker basket on the kitchen table. On the sides of the teapot, a maiden dressed in a jade-green gown visits a bearded emperor at his palace near the sky. The maiden waves a vermilion fan.

"I bet you still don't know how to cook," my mother says. She paces a plate of steamed roast pork buns before me.

"Mom, I'm not hungry."

"If you don't eat more, you will get sick."

I take a bun from the plate, but it is too hot. My mother hands me a nap­kin so I can put the bun down. Then she peels a banana in front of me.

"I'm 'not obsessed with food like you," I say.

"What's wrong with eating?"

She looks at me as she takes a big bite of the banana.

She keeps giving her son for fear of his being hungry. The author writes the plot not to emphasize mother’s obsessed with food but the consideration for her son. The mother did not live in a food-enough age; as a result, she thinks food is important to everyone, and we have to treasure the food. It seems like she is obsessed with food is the story. Because she understood the feeling of starvation, so she does not want her son to have that feeling. However, the son, who does not like his mother, lives in a food adequate family and it is hard for him to image the existence of starvation; as a result, he cannot understand his mother's consideration. Generation gap happens because the different ages they were born.

"I'm going to have a photography show at the end of the summer."

"Are you still taking pictures of old buildings falling down? How ugly! Why don't you take happier  pictures?"

"I thought you would want to come," I answer. "It's not easy to get a gallery."

"If you were married," she says, her voice becoming unusually soft, "you would take better pictures. You would be happy."

"I don't know what you mean. Why do you think getting married will make me happy?"

My mother looks at me as if have spoken in Serbo-Croatian. She always gives me this look when I say something she does not want to hear. She fin­ishes the banana; then she puts the plate of food away. Soon she stands at the sink, turns on the hot water and washes dishes. My mother learned long ago that silence has a power of its own.

She takes out a blue cookie tin from the dining-room cabinet. Inside this tin, my mother keeps her favorite photographs. Whenever I am ready to leave, my mother brings it to the living room and opens it on the coffee table. She knows I cannot resist looking at these pictures again; I will sit down next to her on the sofa for at least another hour. Besides the portraits of the family, my mother has images of people I have never met: her father, who owned a poultry store on Pell Street and didn't get a chance to return to China before he died; my father’s younger sister, who still runs a pharmacy in Rio de Janeiro (she sends the family an annual supply of cough drops); my mother's cousin Kay, who died at thirty, a year after she came to New York from Hong Kong. Although my mother has a story to tell for each photograph, she refuses to speak about Kay, as if the mere mention of her name will bring back her ghost to haunt us all.

Raising Action

Marriage is the disputation between mom and son. “If you were married,”…”you would take better pictures. You would be happy” Mother thinks if her children were getting married that he will have a happy life, and he will start to take some better pictures instead of the old buildings falling down pictures. Mother's opinion is that marriage makes a person grows up, if her son were married he will have a very different view toward the world, and most importantly, someone will replace her place to take care of her son. However, the son think marriage is the grave to everyone. His mother does not have her own decision because of marriage, his mother obey his father's every decision even refuse Lao-Hu's invitation to Honolulu, and give up the chance to learn English, her own interests. He thinks that his mother gives her whole life to his father, but she does not seem to be happy. He ever wonders there is no love between his parents but appreciation. He does not want his life to be interfered with marriage. He refuses marriage for fear of losing himself, and he does not want himself to be like his parents.

 What is special of the story is the photograph. Mom babbles about why her son always takes the photograph of old buildings falling down? Son thinks no matter what subject he shot, what is important is that it is not easy to get a gallery. He wants his mother to put her eyes on how talented he is, but not what photograph he takes. They have an argument, but they do not shout to each other.

Climax

Along in this short story  that we have already read then actually, we doesn`t find the hard conflicts occur in Winterblossom Garden. The conflict is flat not complicated, they are about little conflict between mom and son toward opinion in food and merriage dispute. Besides, them problem is arose when his father get sick and has stomach cancer. So, the mother can`t run the business alone. Although the father sick and stays over in the hopsital for a month. The son always helps his mother to run their restaurant. At last, because of age is over, they decide to sell the restaurant because no one of their children want to continue it.

Although, the parents have run it over forty-three years, the business can`t see longer in the next generation.

Falling Action

The doctor have succeded in removing the malginancy before it has speaded into the body of my father. And he will remain in intensive at last a week. Then in a month his father is ready to come home. Actually, the son make his parents surpised when he was opening the gallery , because the mother ever said to him that to get a gallery is not easy.

Resolution

Finally, mother gave her son a portrait of  his father when he was young , that the mother found it when she was cleaning the house. The relationship both the parents is closer than before.

 “I have never been sure if my parents really love each other. I have only seen them kiss at their childre`s weddings. They never touch each other in public. I often thought they went to sleep in clothes they wore to work”

  ..., my father raises his head to look at my mother. She stares at him a minute, then turns away to open the door. Soon my sister and I are leading him to the living room safa, where  we help him lie back . My mother has a pillow and ablanket ready. She sits down on the coffe table in front of him. I wacthed them hold each other`s hands.

The happy ending of this story is picturing from the son gets the own gallery, and the father is free from cancer and unfortunetely, he forgot to bring camera at last the story after have lunch with his parents, he couldn`t take picture them.

Conclution

Winterblossom Garden describes what will happen in every family. Maybe it is not about marriage or something extra. Since parents and children born in very different ages generation gap is not special in every family. The mom in the story, who gives her children much food, wants him to get married, and fix their  relationship with what her son is interested in. All show the great love from a mother toward her child. On the other hand, son does not know what his mother do are just doing him right. He refuses marriage in order no to like his parents - losing themselves. Family is a place where we learn what we cannot learn in school. Parents are children’s' best teachers. Parents use their experience to guide children into the right way. Moreover, parents can learn what they do not face, contact, and experience from their children. Communication makes a family much harmonious.