11/30/15

In the book The Art of Hearing Heartbeats, the thing I find the most interesting is this struggle inside Julia between conforming to the different natures of her mom and her dad. In most children, they carry traits from both parents, and for Julia, this is difficult because both of her parents are so different. Judith, a fast-paced New Yorker, is basically the product of the city – she wants things immediately, and she lives her life through a busy schedule where her expectations run high. Julia’s father, on the other hand, is the opposite – a Burmese gentleman who takes things slowly and expects things as they come, and he learns to live life simply, while Judith’s life and feelings are extremely complex. With both of these contrasting natures, Julia finds herself stuck in the middle. She follows her mother’s path when she longs for the busy nature of New York when she is in Burma searching for her father, and she desires immediate answers, like her mother would. However, a part of her is just like her dad. The fact that she comes all the way to Burma in search of her father and listens to a stranger for hours about her father’s childhood, which provides no answers, proves that a part of her is just like Tin Win. The book shows some evidence that she has always been closer to her father, like how she always loved to listen to his fantasy stories when she was younger. However, the traits in her mother always come back to her. For example, her immediate desire is to find her father, not to hear his entire life story from U Ba, is something her mother would want. Her life was formed in New York City, where a selfish and impatient nature would come from. But her life was also formed by a father who was raised in Burma, where life’s simplicities are the biggest worry. These two clashing natures collide in Julia, and this creates an inner conflict inside the narrator. Because we have only just started the book, I cannot explain fully who Julia is more like. Throughout the novel, we discover more of this mystery of her father that can later help us figure out if Julia is more like her selfish yet passionate mother or her simple and loving father. However, I don’t want Judith to seem like a hated character. I actually feel for her the most because all she wanted was to be consumed by love, and Tin Win’s selfless nature could never give her that love. This duality of nature is definitely evident in Julia, and maybe we will find out that she is just an exact product of the two parents. This conflicting personality may lead to negative consequences, but I do believe that it will create her true persona. And we might even find out that Tin Win isn’t the amazing man we see him as right now (he did marry Judith, whom he really did not love…). Julia may completely change her feelings towards her father once she finds out more of the truth, and this may change her desire to conform to his Burmese nature. Either way, I’m excited to see how her conflict plays out throughout the novel.