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The Black and White Journey of Lindo and Waverly Jong Throughout the novel The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan convey’s different mother-daughter relationships from each point of view. Joseph Campbell, a well known American Mythologist, in his interview “The Power of Myth” describes a true hero. In their conversation Campbell states “A hero is someone who moves out of a society that would have protected them, and into the dark forest, into the world of fire, or original experience” (3). Campbell is explaining how a hero goes from their original world into the unknown, the “Dark Forest”. He uses “World of fire” as a metaphor for the new experience you undergo. The Hero's Journey consist of eight steps, within these eights steps you change from a
One well-known example of “The Hero’s Journey” from popular culture is the Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, by J.K. Rowling. In the novel, Harry Potter, the main character, is the chosen one and “The Hero’s Journey” applies to his life from the moment he is attacked by He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named as a baby. Joseph Campbell calls the initial phase of a hero’s development the “Call to Adventure.” The call is the in... ...
Amy Tan’s novel, The Joy Luck Club uses much characterization. Each character is portrayed in different yet similar ways. When she was raised, she would do whatever she could to please other people. She even “gave up her life for her parents promise” (49), I the story The Red Candle we get to see how Tan portrays Lindo Jong and how she is brought to life.
In the novel The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, four Chinese mother-daughter pairs, each with her own unique story, have deep connections with each other. At the beginning of the novel they each seem like ordinary women, but as the novel progresses, it becomes clear that these women are more than just mothers, daughters, or wives; they can also be considered heroes according to Joseph Campbell. Joseph Campbell says a hero is someone who undergoes a departure, where the person is confronted with a problem that they must overcome; a fulfillment, where the person finally overcomes the problem; and a return, where the person passes on what they gain and learn from the experiences in the form of a "life-giving elixir"(Campbell). This “life-giving elixir”(Campbell) is to be used by someone else to better themselves. Following Campbell's model, the character that stands out the most as a hero is Lindo Jong because of the hardships that she faces at a young age, such as being left by her family and being forced into an arranged marriage, and her perseverance to get through them and to pass on her...
The plot ofThe Joy Luck Club displays this idea in each woman's story. The older generation is comprised of four women: Suyuan Woo, An-Mei Hsu, Lindo Jong, and Ying-Ying St. Clair. They relate their stories to their daughters, hoping to retain some of their rich histories and old lifestyles in China. Joy Luck is centered around Suyuan Woo's daughter, June, who is dealing with the death of her mother. June takes her mother's place at the mah-jong table, where she is told that she must learn about her mother's life in China. The one thing June knows of her mother's life in China is the story of her abandoned twin babies. The members of t...
In Amy Tan’s novel, The Joy Luck Club, the character of An-mei learns to love and respect her mother. This essay will focus on the precise moment of the transformation of An-mei to a strong, self-confident woman.
Reviewing the whole book, it is clear that The Joy Luck Club is a link to intergenerational and intercultural connections. Tan said that "To my mother and the memory of her mother you asked me once what I would remember this, and much more." The novel develops with mother and daughter and Tan understands the special bonds between women. The Joy Luck Club is set in San Francisco's Chinatown, but much of it occurs in the flashbacks to the mothers' lives in China. As a result, we become familiar with three different times and places: China, where the mothers grew up, San Francisco, where the daughters and mothers live, and America in general place.
The Joy Luck Club, a novel by Amy Tan, is structured in an unusual way. It is divided into four different sections. Each section has four stories told by four different women. In the first section all the mothers, in the Joy Luck Club, talk about their childhood. In the next two sections the daughters talk about their childhood and their experiences through life. In the last section the four mothers speak about the stories of when they were younger, around their daughters' age. This novel explores countless topics. Not only does it deal with gender identity and the relationships between Chinese-American cultures, but it also deals with mother daughter relationships. Amy Tan shows us how mothers and daughters mirror each other. Every daughter in this novel hears about their mother's life and sees some comparisons to her own life. "All women are daughters and must resolve the conflicts inherent in the mother/daughter relationship if they are to understand themselves an ultimately to establish their own identity". (Internet 1)
“When we quit thinking primarily about ourselves and our own self-preservation, we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness” (Campbell 1). These words by the scholar Joseph Campbell illustrates his philosophy of the hero’s journey, which contains the three criteria of a hero. From these three criteria, he describes a hero’s journey beginning with a departure, fulfillment, and a return which encompasses the hero’s sacrifice for the good of others. As a result, from Amy Tan’s novel The Joy Luck Club, the characters could be applied to Campbell’s theory of heroism due to their life experiences. For example, the character Rose does not undergo a heroic journey. From Campbell’s theory of heroism, Rose contains the departure and the fulfillment of a hero; however, she lacks a concrete return Campbell describes as the moral objective to sacrifice for another person or idea.
“`Then I wish I wasn’t your daughter. I wish you weren’t my mother,’ I shouted.”
The Joy Luck Club begins with an allegory, accentuating the theme of storytelling and the idea that stories act as bridges between people that expresses complex ideas more easily. In this allegory the woman hopes to change her fate by coming to America and having the opportunity to be something more than she could be in China. The swan’s transformation represents her to hope to transform by immigrating to America. However, when she does immigrate to the United States she is stripped of her prized possession and confused with the English documents leaving her powerless with feelings of despair.
In Mother Tongue, Amy Tan uses diction to make the article personal; she has brilliant syntax, and innovated imagery giving an effective view of her theme. The tone of the essay makes it personal for the reader to be able to connect; she shares true stories and her opinions. Her syntax throughout the paper was creative; she used a combination of short and long sentences in order to emphasize her points. Imagery was well developed and very vivid especially when talking about daytime turning into night fall. This is the true account of how the author of the famous Joy Luck Club found her writing style. Not her mother’s English, not her professors’ English, but a middle ground.
In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club, Four pairs of mothers and daughters embark on the journey that is life. Each young woman comes to realize how valuable the relationships with their mothers are. As each daughter learns from her mother, she goes through the sometimes-painful process of trying to understand her enigmatic mother. To finally unravel the mystery surrounding their mothers is to understand who they, themselves, really are.
Family connections require communication in order to strengthen emotional connections. Amy Tan, author of Joy Luck Club, demonstrates the value of family bonds throughout all of her novels. While writing, Tan considers personal struggles respecting Chinese culture and adopting American culture. Although fictional, Tan implements personal experiences while writing realistic circumstances in The Joy Luck Club. Tan’s characters experience traumas typically common within immigrant families, rather than unrelatable scenarios. Much like real life, Tan illustrates the disconnect between generations of Chinese mothers and American-raised daughters. When Tan describes her writing of her story, she explains, “The question is always related to my life,
The movie “Joy Luck Club” is about the relationship between four Chinese mothers and their American-Chinese daughters. The four mothers are immigrants from China living in San Francisco California. They gather often to play and told stories about there lives in China. They reveal there flashbacks stories to there daughters. All of them lives are shaped by the clash of American and Chinese cultures as they endeavor to understand their family bonds. Each mother wants the best for their daughters, but they struggle through apprehension, feelings, and failures. In the film theirs conflict between mothers and daughters. The two mother-daughter pairs I will discuss are: Lindo and Waverly, and An-Mei and Rose.
In the novel, the “Joy Luck Club,” ‘joy luck’ is seen as a cultural concept that cannot be translated. ‘Joy luck’ was referred when anyone could be anything while living a joyful, lucky life in a poor, unsafe home condition. During the time of these four women, they would use their own resources to enjoy potlucks together every week with games of mahjong and quality food. To the daughters, ‘joy luck’ is not as powerful as it is to their mothers because they were in born the United States, where their children were more opened to possibilities and chances that their mothers never got to experience. Their daughters have conformed into the American morals knowing only a small portion of their cultural background but refuse to learn more because