People tend to hide their true personality on the outside. Some people do this to hide their weaknesses or flaws, while others are reluctant to show their true self to avoid any harm that might attack them externally or internally due to displaying their true personality. However, when a person is subjected to pressure or force, the representation of their true personality is revealed or amplified uncontrollably. This behavioral knowledge is presented by Ralph Chang in Typical American where his true inner self slowly surfaces as he faces external and internal pressures. In “Typical American,” Ralph Chang deals with family pressure, adjustment to American society, and business failure that reveal his passive personality and incompetence. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not 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 saddled with a heavy burden due to his parents' high expectations as the only son in the family, but he failed to be the role model his parents imagined that he was. Jen writes: "A government scholarship! On-the-job training! He is an advanced engineer... Of course, in the end, Yifeng (Ralph) came to the United States... on the way of America, Yifeng studied” (Jen 5). It is suggested that Ralph is sent to the United States by his father to extend his studies in a better environment through rigorous teaching, as his father anticipates that Ralph's degeneration will only worsen while studying in China. Ralph, however, does not resist or rebel against his father's decision to send him to study abroad in the United States for higher education. This reflects the low opinion of Ralph who says for himself that he is unhappy and uncomfortable with his father's pressure and force to study in America due to his poor academic performance, according to the standards of Ralph's parents. Ralph's inability to confront his father with a strong and aggressive attitude by opposing studying abroad and slavishly following his father's decision reveals his passive and incompetent personality. Obviously, Ralph faces problematic situations that forced him to live in America and forcibly adapt to the 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, he encounters difficulties due to language barriers and conflicting disparities between societal culture traditional Chinese and modern American societal culture. Jen writes, “Being Chinese, he thought the safest place to work would be in Chinese restaurants...he tried to ask in English, but it was no use” (Jen 43) and soon, “he had stopped going to work. .. and he waited to see what happened. Anything could happen, this was America. He surrendered himself to the country and dreamed" (Jen 42). Ralph was part of the exclusive, outer circle of American society because he was an immigrant who did not speak English fluently and he was not either more fully adapted to American culture that was deeply and frequently in collision with fixed old-world Chinese cultural principles..