Conflict of generations is a phenomenon in human relations that has existed as long as people live on the earth. Misunderstanding between the young and the old result from a vast variety of reasons, and the search for the suitable resolution of generation conflicts has been one of the topics attracting not only practical psychologists but creative minds as well. “How do we forgive our fathers?” is the question asked by one of the characters in Chris Eyre’s movie Smoke Signals , and in search of the answer to it one may also turn to the short story “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan. The way the characters of both the movie and the short story forgive their parents for painful experiences of their childhood is through forgiveness, understanding, and acceptance of their parents the way they are. The almost week-long journey of the main character in Smoke Signals , Victor, to collect the belongings of his deceased father, Arnold, may be seen as a symbolic depiction of the long spiritual way he covered to forgive Arnold for leaving his family. Obviously addressing the young generation with the message of understanding and reconciliation, the movie is set in a form of narration that highlights the key stages in the process of accepting the father’s mistakes. One of the most efficient rhetoric strategies employed in Smoke Signals for showing the connections between the past and the present conflicts within Victor’s soul is the narrative technique of flashback. Reminiscences of the fire scene serve both to show Arnold’s mistake of striking the fatal fire and to demonstrate his dedication to correcting his mistakes and saving the baby from that fire. A symbolic parallel can be drawn between the fire scenes and the scenes where Arnold drinks heavily and mistreats his wife and son. The destructive impulse of maltreatment scenes is compensated by the constructive idea of rescuing the baby from the fire. A parallel idea to the latter is Arnold’s eternal desire to come back to his family and save it from the destructive fire of disruption. Thus the key message of balance between the good and evil is delivered through the techniques of flashback, symbolism, and parallel ideas. In order to realize the complex ways of the tensions between generations, it is demonstrative to turn to another example of generation conflict in “Two Kinds”, a short story by Amy Tan. The main character of the story, a Chinese immigrant girl called Jing-Mei, is pressured into becoming a prodigy by her mother who believes that anything is possible in America. The spheres where Jing-Mei should excel are chosen by her mother quite haphazardly, on the basis of articles about prodigies she reads in popular magazines. Jing-Mei is hurt by the fact that her personal desires and interests are not reckoned with, and protests first latently by sabotaging piano lessons and then openly by confronting her mother and wishing she had never been born if she is not respected (Tan 186). Her mother never mentions playing the piano after that incident. However, she gives Jing-Mei a piano for her thirteenth birthday and still believes the girl could become a genius if she wanted. Jing-Mei had not played it until after her mother’s death, and it is only then that she understands how good her mother actually meant. As it is obvious both from the film and from the short story, conf