“Catfish in the Bathtub” Response Questions

1. How does Kingston use the five senses to create descriptive imagery? Give examples of her

use of sounds, tastes, smells, sights, and feelings. Which do you believe are the most effective?

Kingston goes on to talk about how they would put fingers in our ears to shut out the bird screams and the thud, thud of turtles

swimming in the boiling water, their shells hitting the sides of the pot. She also talks about when her mother was

dismembering skunk on the chopping block and she could smell the rubbery odor through the candy.I believe the bird screams would be pretty horrible for a child.

2. Evaluate the use of dialogue (records of spoken words or conversation) in this essay? What

effect does it have on your understanding of Kingston’s main point?

The first thing I would notice is that they seemed on the lower class side so therefore their mother had no choice on what to feed them, so by getting them to eat should would be pretty brutal about it. Which helps understanding the main point.

3. Although other incidents or ideas are described rather briefly, Kingston devotes a full, detailed

paragraph to a description of the monkey feast…why do you think she does this?

Her mother told her that is what rich people would eat, so when she was little she though hey if rich people are eating monkeys we can be far from them with all the weird stuff we ate.

4. Throughout the essay, Kingston combines very realistic description (the bear’s claw, the turtles

thudding against the pot, the monkey feast) with various similes and metaphors…what figures

of speech (see description notes) does Kingston use in the essay?

To me i feel like she uses a lot of subjective description and the reason for thinking this is because she conveys her personal response to her subject.

5. “Catfish in the Bathtub” opens with a lengthy catalog of foods that Kingston’s mother

prepared, yet ends with a very brief, simple statement. Why do you think she does this? How

effective is this concluding strategy?

I feel like kingston ends her story like this to show her how much she dislikes Chinese food. She show this disliking by being short and to the point that she really has not ate but would rather eat plastic than Chinese food.