People tend to hide their true personality from the outside. Some individuals do this to keep their weaknesses or flaws hidden, while others are reluctant to show their true self to prevent any harm that might attack them externally or internally resulting from the manifestation of their true personality. However, when a person encounters pressure or force, the representation of his or her true personality is revealed or amplified uncontrollably. This behavioral knowledge is presented by Ralph Chang in Typical American where his true inner personality slowly emerges as he faces external and internal pressures. In “Typical American,” Ralph Chang faces family pressures, adapting to American society, and business failure that reveals his passive personality and incompetence. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Family pressure, especially from his father, shows Ralph's passive and incompetent personality. Growing up among intelligent and talented sisters, Ralph was burdened with the heavy burden of his parents' high expectations as the only child in the family, but he failed to be the role model his parents imagined him to be. Jen writes: "A scholarship from the government! Field training! Its about an advanced engineer... Of course, in the end, Yifeng (Ralph) came to the United States... on the way to America, Yifeng has studied" (Jen 5). His father suggests that Ralph be sent to the United States to prolong his educational studies in a higher quality environment through rigorous teaching because his father predicts that Ralph's degeneration will only worsen by studying in China. Ralph, however, neither resists nor rebels against his father's decision to send him to study abroad in the United States for university studies. This reflects the weak representation of Ralph's opinion in speaking for himself that he is discontented and uncomfortable with his father's pressure and force to study in America due to his poor academic performance, according to Ralph's parents' standards. Ralph's inability to confront his father with a strong and aggressive attitude, opposing studying abroad and submissively following his father's decision, reveals his passive and incompetent personality. Evidently, Ralph is faced with problematic situations that forced him to live in America and forcibly adapt to the situation. American society and culture. While he was studying in America, the Chinese Communist Revolution of 1949 occurred and cut off all transportation and travel to China. Ralph finds no way to return home and is left alone to somehow survive in the foreign country but, as expected, encounters difficulties due to language barriers and the contrasting disparity between traditional Chinese and modern American social culture. Jen writes, “Being Chinese, she had thought the safest place to work would be in Chinese restaurants…she tried asking in English, but it was no use” (Jen 43) and soon “she had stopped going to work. ..and lay waiting to see what would happen. Anything could happen, this was America. He gave himself up to the country and dreamed" (Jen 42). Ralph was part of the exclusive, outer circle of American society because he was an immigrant who neither spoke fluent English nor was fully adapted to American culture that was deeply and often in conflict with fixed, old-world Chinese cultural principles. Ralph held back. His inability to speak perfect English and the unwelcoming attitude of the American people in the..