Throughout the novel, The Joy Luck Club, there are four stories told by the four families that are in the Joy Luck Club. With each story of their past, there is an important lesson shown that the characters and the reader are meant to learn. Throughout the novel, every single mother wants the best for their daughters more than anything. At times, to achieve this, the mothers make sacrifices to better their daughter´s lives.
Amy Tan uses a strong language style all through her novel. The word choice Amy Tan uses makes the reader want to continue on with the story to find out what happens next because it is not always predictable. In one of the four short stories the grandmother tells a child, ¨Then you must teach my daughter this same lesson. How to lose your innocence, but not your hope. How to laugh forever.¨ (Tan 213). She uses phrases like this one throughout the novel to catch the reader´s attention and to show some sort of lesson taught. This greatly impacts the novel because there are multiple lessons shown in
…show more content…
The themes that are mostly reiterated are the strong mother daughter relationship and how, with this strong bond, the mothers would sacrifice absolutely anything so their daughters can have a better life than they had. One of the mothers, An-Mei Hsu, explains the story of her own mother´s ultimate sacrifice, ¨When the poison broke into her body, she whispered to me that she would rather kill her own weak spirit so she could give me a stronger one.¨ (Tan 240). This shows just how far An-Mei´s mother was willing to go so her daughter could have a better life than she currently had. Her mother was willing to end her own life to make sure her daughter was properly cared for and would be able to do better in life than she had as a fourth wife to a man whom she never loved. Every single mother in the novel has the best intentions in mind for their
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...
Deception binds the characters of the Joy Luck Club together. In the Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan depicts deception at almost every turn in the novel. Mothers often help their daughters through deceptive comments; husbands hide secrets from their wives through deceptive acts. Even best friends deceive each other as they struggle for one reason or another. Throughout the story, deception is an irreplaceable tool for parenting; for attempting to keep marriages together, or maintaining friendships. From time to time, it grows out of control from a benign lecture to a life changing scam.
In Amy Tan short story, The Joy Luck Club, she reveals personal challenges that hint the reader of gender roles in that specific society. Men and women each have specific standards and expectations in the society. The men are often viewed as the one who work all day to support their families financially. While the women, are often viewed as housewives that have to provide the basic and sentimental care to their families. The author shares that "The man who was my husband brought me and our two babies to Keweilin because he thought we would be safe" (Tan 74). Goes back throughout generation and even stories and fairy tales reveal the difference between a man and a woman. Times do change and so should people 's ideas as well. Although, people
But a woman’s heart, a heart drawn out of sadness, the dead heart that gave shape to the world. “A particular beginning results in a particular end”. Messages relayed from Precious Auntie to her daughter. The theme of heart resonates so deeply through The Bonesetters Daughter, that a whole chapter is titled after it. Not only that, but a reader can also sense the importance of a hearts symbolism because it is stated over and over in the first paragraph of this said chapter. If that’s not enough, it is also the name of Precious Auntie’s village: Immortal Heart. By employing skills learned through analyzing “How to Read Literature like a Professor” a reader takes note of the metonymy and irony of the village’s name. Reader may infer that, possibly, a heart is the importance of the story. A heart may be the message of the novel. It symbolizes a particular beginning and end. A heart from a sad woman, possibly Precious Aunties heart, ties everything together. She is the start of the family, and she is the end. She is the resolution, the big mystery behind Amy Tan’s novel. But then why is the village name Immortal heart, and how can an immortal heart end? Ironic, but maybe, this symbolizes the heart of the novel, the village, Precious Auntie, the resolute perseverance of survival of both, only to come to an indefinite demise, left to
Throughout the novel, The Joy Luck Club, author Amy Tan explores the issues of tradition and change and the impact they have on the bond between mothers and daughters. The theme is developed through eight women that tell their separate stories, which meld into four pairs of mother-daughter relationships.
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.
The theme of this book is that the human capacity to adapt to and find happiness in the most difficult circumstances. Each character in the novel shows this in their way. For instance, their family is randomly taken from their home and forced to work but they still remain a close nit family. In addition, they even manage to stick together after being separated for one of their own. These show how even in the darkest time they still manage to find a glimmer of hope and they pursued on.
"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.
Amy Tan, in ?Mother Tongue,? Does an excellent job at fully explaining her self through many different ways. It?s not hard to see the compassion and love she has for her mother and for her work. I do feel that her mother could have improved the situation of parents and children switching rolls, but she did the best she could, especially given the circumstances she was under. All in all, Amy just really wanted to be respected by her critics and given the chance to prove who she is. Her time came, and she successfully accomplished her goals. The only person who really means something to her is her mother, and her mother?s reaction to her first finished work will always stay with her, ?so easy to read? (39).
No relationship is ever perfect no matter how great it seems. In the novel The Joy Luck Club, written by Amy Tan, she tells the story of a few mother daughter pairs that are in a group named the Joy Luck Club. The Joy Luck Club is a group of women who come together once a week to play mahjong. The founder of the Joy Luck Club, Suyuan Woo, dies, leaving her daughter Jing-mei to take her place in the club. Her daughter, Jing-mei, receives money from the other members of the club to travel to China in order to find her mother's twin daughters who were left many years ago. In this book you get more of the details of this family and a few more. Amy Tan uses the stories of Jing-mei and Suyuan, Waverly and Jindo, and An-mei and Rose to portray her theme of, mother daughter relationships can be hard at times but they are always worth it in the end.
Throughout your life you will run into some miscommunication with someone, whether its a family member, a friend, or even a random person. At times people would say something to someone, and they would either take it literally or just misunderstand it. Both people would start arguing which would lead to a huge disagreement. In Amy Tan's novel, The Joy Luck Club, miscommunication plays a huge role. Mother, Lindo, and her daughter, Waverly, misunderstand each other and a hatred feel for each other begins. In the end both, Lindo and Waverly, talk about Lindo's origins. From the two solving their problems, Amy tan shows that you should take the time to get to know one another.
Mother-Daughter Relationships in Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club In the Joy Luck Club, the author Amy Tan, focuses on mother-daughter relationships. She examines the lives of four women who emigrated from China, and the lives of four of their American-born daughters. The mothers: Suyuan Woo, An-Mei Hsu, Lindo Jong, and Ying-Ying St. Clair had all experienced some life-changing horror before coming to America, and this has forever tainted their perspective on how they want their children raised.
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.
The one of the main themes in the epilogue, and in the entire novel is