Development in relationships provokes the teaching of valuable life lessons. Amy Tan’s novel The Joy Luck Club, published in 1989, delineates the progressive development in the mother daughter relationships and the lack offs impact on an individual. The novel illustrates the tensions between mother and daughter through a lack of communication- illuminating that communication reaches prosperity only when understanding has been established. Tan furthermore emphasises, the motherly supremacy as a contribution to a daughter’s tireless urge to instil acceptance. The presence of empathy and understanding facilitates successful communication. Tan highlights this importance through the initial strain and later development of Suyuan and Junes relationship. …show more content…
A power, credible from juvenescence to adulthood, is denoted in Lindo and Waverly’s relationship. Lindo teaches Waverly the ‘art of invisible strength’ as a child, leading her to chess – which acts as the key metaphor of their relationship. Her succession at chess, allows Lindo to feed off Waverly’s pride and ‘show off’. The relationship is deliberation of a metaphorical chess match, her mother acting as the authoritative opponent. This authority is descended from Lindo’s childhood. Her mother signed ‘a contact’, selling her to the son of ‘Huang Taitai’. The contract and Taitai’s powerful authority, that expected perfection, was with no regard of Lindo’s desires. Waverly’s urgency for acceptance is instilled into adulthood, even wanting to fulfil expectations with her fiancé -Rich. Waverly’s first person narration, displays that her mother’s satisfaction, ‘feels worse than any kind of misery’. This leads to her own criticism in personal affairs, including the imitation of romance when Rich gives Waverly a gift. Throughout the book, Lindo’s power is repetitively illustrated but further on we can see the hierarchy shift from Lindo to Waverly. Waverly starts ‘translating’ for her mother, in a barber shop, despite her ability to speak English. The narration that Waverly is her ‘own person’ demises the power her mother holds. Yet when similarities are soon recognised between
Imagine a relationship between a coach and a player. The job of the coach is to make his student better at the sport; therefore, he puts pressure upon the player and expects him to show off the skills that he teaches him. This pressure and expectation can lead to the player winning or losing depending on the player’s motivation. Also, depending upon the result of the competition, the coach and the player can have a strong relationship or a weak one with growing distances and irritation if the two do not get along. Likewise, in the novel, The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, the mothers develop many expectations of their daughters as they begin to worry about their daughters’ future. Although having expectations from a child can lead to a negative effect in a relationship, it can also have a positive outcome in a relationship.
Children, as they become adults, become more appreciative of their parents. In The Joy Luck Club, the attitudes of four daughters toward their mothers change as the girls mature and come to realize that their mothers aren't so different after all.
Once Waverly begins to become a chess master, the mother is entering unchartered waters. There is a source of success, something that she has never experienced before. Waverly's mother has this sick and twisted belief that it is herself instead of Waverly as the true source of success.
In the novel The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan portrays the effects of childhood events on the roles and attitudes of the present lives each character must face. Particularly, Lena St. Clair felt restricted by her mother as she shields her from the dangers of the outside world. Consequently, when Lena did face trouble, she was unable to fight back and saw evil in everything she saw. Furthermore, the constant conflict that arose from the male superiority in Ying-Ying’s marriage and her miscommunications with her husband influenced Lena’s present behavior. Instead of expressing her own concerns, Lena allows her husband to make major decisions. Influenced by her childhood experiences and the troubles of the marriage between her parents, Lena inherits a passive role in her relationship to Harold.
Tan explained the feelings of Waverly through an important symbolic imaginary chess game as she wrote, “My white pieces screamed as they scurried and fell off the board one by one. As her men drew closer to my edge, I felt myself growing light” (508). This showed how Waverly felt about the relationship with her mother and how she was losing the battle. The conflicts were important especially to the theme, for the conflicts shown where the lack of understanding came from and how it can be resolved.
In The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan explores mother-daughter relationships, and at a lower level, relationships between friends, lovers, and even enemies. The mother-daughter relationships are most likely different aspects of Tan's relationship with her mother, and perhaps some parts are entirely figments of her imagination. In this book, she presents the conflicting views and the stories of both sides, providing the reader--and ultimately, the characters--with an understanding of the mentalities of both mother and daughter, and why each one is the way she is.
"I have already experienced the worst. After this, there is no worst possible thing" (Amy Tan 121). Throughout The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan tells stories of how mothers use the misfortunes in their lives, to try to teach their daughters about life. Many of the mothers had bad experiences in their pasts and do not want to see their daughters live through the same types of problems. They try to make their daughters' lives as easy and problem free as possible. However, the daughters do not see this as an act of love, but rather as an act of control. In the end, the daughters realize that their mothers tried to use their experiences to teach them not to give up hope, and to look at the good of an experience rather than the bad.
Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. Published by Penguin Books 1989. New York, New York, U.S.A.
In The Joy Luck Club, the novel traces the fate of the four mothers-Suyuan Woo, An-mei Hsu, Lindo Jong, and Ying-ying St. Clair-and their four daughters-June Woo, Rose Hsu Jordan, Waverly Jong, and Lena St. Clair. Through the experiences that these characters go through, they become women. The mothers all fled China in the 1940's and they all retain much of their heritage. Their heritage focuses on what is means to be a female, but more importantly what it means to be an Asian female.
The language between a mother and a daughter can create a huge brick wall in their relationship because they have different views on life, and how they should handle it. In the book "The Joy Luck Club," by Amy Tan, a story is told of An-Mei Hus and her daughter Rose Hsu Jordan, who is going though a divorce. An- Mei wants her daughter, Rose, to try and save her marriage. But Rose knows it’s pointless to try and upon that she decides to learn to stick up for her self, get a lawyer, and fight her soon to be ex-husband for the house. The relationship between An-Mei Hsu and Rose Hsu Jordan shows that language is a brick wall, because they don’t understand why wants what they want. Rose doesn’t care to save her marriage; she only wants to get the house. When her mother, An-Mei, wants Rose to fight to save her marriage, because it’s the Chinese way, and how the only way to keep her honor among her family.
She first enters her journey when she learns about invisible strength from her mother, “I was six when my mother taught me the art of invisible strength. It was strategy for winning arguments, respect from others, and eventually, though neither of us knew it at the time, chess games”(Tan 89). This quote indicates the beginning of Waverly’s journey as she discovers her chess talent. Despite this, Waverly fails to realize her mother’s important role in her success, “‘Why do you have to use me to show off? If you want to show off, then why don’t you learn to play chess’” (Tan 99). This quote shows Waverly’s immaturity and her inability to recognize her mother’s affection. This eventually leads to Waverly’s downfall when she decides to quit playing chess. As an adult, Waverly doesn’t overcome her issues with her mother, “After our miserable lunch, I gave up the idea that there would ever be good time to tell her the news that Rich Schields and I were getting married” (Tan 167). This quote displays Waverly’s inability to trust and connect with her mother as she has grown older. While spending time with her mother at home, Waverly does succeed in recognize her mother’s importance and true intentions, she states that, “ In the brief instant that I had peered over the barriers I could finally see what was really there: an old woman, a wok of her armor, a knitting needle for her sword, getting a little crabby as she waited patiently for her daughter to invite her in” (Tan 184). The following quote signifies Waverly’s psychological transformation in her journey as she successfully recognizes her mother’s affection and stops confusing her actions for personal attacks. Nonetheless, Waverly fails in completing her journey. Although, she does succeed in improving her relationship with her mother, she still does not complete a spiritual or physical deed and fails to achieve the “return” in her journey.
Throughout Amy Tan’s novel, The Joy Luck Club, the reader can see the difficulites in the mother-daughter relationships. The mothers came to America from China hoping to give their daughters better lives than what they had. In China, women were “to be obedient, to honor one’s parents, one’s husband, and to try to please him and his family,” (Chinese-American Women in American Culture). They were not expected to have their own will and to make their own way through life. These mothers did not want this for their children so they thought that in America “nobody [would] say her worth [was] measured by the loudness of her husband’s belch…nobody [would] look down on her…” (3). To represent everything that was hoped for in their daughters, the mothers wanted them to have a “swan- a creature that became more than what was hoped for,” (3). This swan was all of the mothers’ good intentions. However, when they got to America, the swan was taken away and all she had left was one feather.
When analyzing the Joy Luck club it is important to consider the life of the author. It is apparent after studying both The Joy Luck Club and Amy Tan that there are some incredible similarities among the two, particularly the story of mother Suyuan-Woo and her daughter Jing-Mei Woo. Suyuan is a main character and plays an extremely important role in the novel even though she passed away. She created the Joy Luck club years ago and is the main reason why this tight kit family exists today. Suyuan decided to create the Joy Luck club during a ve...
Just as with her books, Tan’s focus in this essay is her mother. Tan considered her book, The Joy Luck Club, a success after her mother read it and exclaimed over how easy it was to read. However, the audience of this essay is not Tan’s mother, but rather it is anyone who can relate to this situation. Tan’s purpose was to bring to attention the fact that when the language spoken at home is different from that spoken by the general public, problems will arise for those caught in...
There are so many different types of family relationships. Whatever form a family takes; it is an important part of everyone’s life. My family has played an important role in my life. Good family relationships serve as a foundation to interactions with others. Supportive families will help children to thrive. The quality of the family relationship is more important than the size of the family. Making the relationships priority, communication, and providing support for one another is key to developing relationships. Family relationships are what make up our world today; they shape the ways that we see things and the ways that we do things.