Question

Locate an example of a flashback in the story "Rules of the Game" and describe it. Include the definition of flashback in your answer, and support your response with evidence from the text.

Answer 1

Answer and Explanation:

"Rules of the Game" is a short story by author Amy Tan. The main character is an eight-year-old named Waverly Jong, the American daughter of Chinese immigrants.

The very first lines in the story are an example of flashback. Flashback is a technique that interrupts the chronological order of events of a story to go back to an earlier time. The narrator in "Rules of the Game" is Waverly herself. Her focus is on her eight-year-old self and what happened when she learned to play chess. However, she uses flashback at the beginning of the story to transition to a time, when she was only six-years-old, when her mother taught her a valuable lesson. We only notice this is a flashback a few lines later:

"I was six when my mother taught me the art of invisible strength. It was a strategy for winning arguments, respect from others, and eventually, though neither of us knew it at the time, chess games."

Answer 2

Answer:

A flashback is a moment when a character remembers and describes an event or events that happened in the past. This literary device helps to give background information about characters in the story; it also shows how a past event may have affected a character. The flashback technique aids characterization, plot development, and creation of conflict in a story.

In “Rules of the Game,” the narrator, Waverly Jong, relates the entire story using the flashback technique. In the excerpt below, the narrator takes the reader back in time to describe the place where she lived in San Francisco:

We lived on Waverly Place, in a warm, clean, two-bedroom flat that sat above a small Chinese bakery specializing in steamed pastries and dim sum. In the early morning, when the alley was still quiet, I could smell fragrant red beans as they were cooked down to a pasty sweetness. By daybreak, our flat was heavy with the odor of fried sesame balls and sweet curried chicken crescents. From my bed, I would listen as my father got ready for work, then locked the door behind him, one-two-three clicks.

The use of sensory details gives a very clear picture of the narrator’s home and surroundings. This excerpt shows how the flashback technique helps to provide readers with background information.

Explanation: