The Complexities of Love Exposed in The Joy Luck Club
In the novel "The Joy Luck Club" by Amy Tan, the ignorance, the disregard of, and the necessity of love are all reveled as the characters tell their life stories and memories. The characters in the novel take love for granted. By ignoring love, concentrating more on material possessions, and hiding their true identities, the characters don't realize love's importance.
One character that takes love for granted is Harold, Lena St. Clair's husband. This occurs when Lena leans over to him in their car and states "I love you." He responds by asking Lena a question about his car, which seems to be more important to him than his relationship with her. Harold does not realize the importance of love. He only thinks about material possessions. Since Harold does not revealing his true nature, he reveals that he has a lack of love for himself as an individual. The love you have for yourself is a necessity in life because it provides self-respect; if one respects oneself, one will respect and love others.
The story of Lindo Jong provides insight into the concept of revealing your true nature. To "keep everything inside" as does Lindo Jong, provides for not being able to experience love to its fullest. Lindo Jong hides "under a red marriage scarf" in attempt to shield herself from the outside world. Her "hiding under the scarf" demonstrates that to be able to love, you must be able to first reveal your true nature. Ying-Ying St. Clair stands as an example of the desire to remain hidden as she says, "All these years I kept my true nature hidden, running along like a small shadow so nobody could catch me." The image of the shadow relates directly to the red marriage scarf. They both attempt to provide the concealment of their true natures, because the result of revealing your true self may be that of "pain".
The importance of love goes unnoticed as the characters take love for granted and expect it to naturally come to them. The ceasing of taking love for granted does occur later and has its results and consequences. The characters realize that they are taking love for granted when they feel meaningless and uncomfortable, and stop doing so by either ending the relationship or confronting the problem.
Amy Tan 's novel, The Joy Luck Club, explores the relationships and experiences of four Chinese mothers with that of their four Chinese-American daughters. The differences in the upbringing of those women born around the 1920’s in China, and their daughters born in California in the 80’s, is undeniable. The relationships between the two are difficult due to lack of understanding and the considerable amount of barriers that exist between them.
You might think that Deion didn’t have any religion in his past life, but he did. He grew up going to church with his mother. He has never drank or smoked. Since both of his fathers were addicted to those things, he made a commitment to stay away from that. One day he was with some friends in a car and they were smoking pot. He told them that he didn’t do that stuff and they left him alone.
The Joy Luck Club is an emotional tale about four women who saw life as they had seen it back in China. Because the Chinese were very stereotypic, women were treated as second class citizens and were often abused. Through sad and painful experiences, these four women had tried to raise their daughters to live the American dream by giving them love and support, such things which were not available to them when they were young. These women revealed their individual accounts in narrative form as they relived it in their memories. These flashbacks transport us to the minds of these women and we see the events occur through their eyes. There were many conflicts and misunderstandings between the two generations due to their differences in upbringing and childhood. In the end, however, these conflicts would bring mother and daughter together to form a bond that would last forever.
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.
Cottino-Jones sums up love and the community in this story in her book. She says, "the lovers in this books are constantly faced with violence, death and isolation when their affairs come into conflict with society’s rigid behavior codes "(Cottino-Jones, 79). Lack of communication and social factors made everyone in the story unhappy or dead.
The Joy Luck Club is the telling of a tale of struggle by four mothers and their four daughters trying to understand the issue of gender identity, how they each discover or lose their sense of self and what they mean to one another. Throughout the book each of the mothers works hard at teaching their daughters the virtues of Chinese wisdom while allowing the opportunities of American life. They try passing on a piece of themselves despite the great barriers that are built between the women. Each of the stories gives a wonderful glimpse into the Chinese culture and heritage that the mothers are trying to reveal to their daughters through the use of festivals, food dishes, marriage ceremonies, and the raising of children, essentially their past experiences.
After a more detailed examination of the stories, however, it becomes evident that each individual is striving to find love. Though love is a universal goal, each person's criteria for a meaningful, fulfilling and loving relationship varies. This is clearly demonstrated by the different situations in which the characters find themselves. The conventional, stereotypical, and almost cliché demonstration of love can be seen in stories A & D, where the characters simply "fall in love and get married".
Deontology is a non-consequentialist theory. While consequentialism believes the ends always justify the means, deontologists claim that the rightness of an action should not be solely dependent on maximizing the good, even if that action goes against what is ethically right. For example, four critical conditioned patients in a hospital need a different organ to survive and a healthy man comes into the hospital for a check-up, would you kill the healthy man to save the four? According to consequentialism, the doctor should take the healthy man’s organs to save the others, thus maximizing the good. However, we all know that it is ethically wrong. Deontology objects to this way o...
In The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan, the characters Suyuan and June have a mother-daughter relationship fraught with conflict, but ultimately rooted in deep love and commitment for one another. Because of drastic differences in the environments in which they were raised and in their life experiences, these two women have many opposing ideas and beliefs. This coupled with their lack of communication are responsible for many of the problems they encounter during the course of their relationship. These conflicts are only resolved when June learns about her mother's past and accepts their respective differences. The manner in which their relationship develops and the conflicts June and Suyuan face reveal some of the themes that Amy Tan intends for the readers to learn. These themes concern such topics as finding life's importance, making choices, and understanding ourselves and our families.
In other words, Kant’s deontological ethics acknowledges that actions and their outcomes are independent things (Shakil). The primary focus of deontologists is that the moral intentions or the moral duties are more important than the consequences. As humans have an ability to make rational decisions, deontologists argue that people have to perform duties that are morally correct and must not be influenced to perform them based on what we gain from its consequences. Kant, further theorizes, that the moral worth of an action is determined by the human will and that people have to perform moral duties that encourage good will. Although there are several well-known deontologists, Kant is generally considered as the father of deontology as he further developed this ideology with his concept of categorical
Virtue theory defines what it takes to be a good person and above all else one’s character matters most (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2014). This theory focuses on the person’s moral character rather than duties. A virtuous person is someone who acts just in situations throughout his or her lifetime because of their good character (Boylan, 2009, p. 133-139). An example of a virtuous person would be a priest. A virtuous person does not act to gain favors, but only to do their duty. Individuals who practice virtue theory ponders questions like; how should one live, what is a good life or what are proper social and family values. The deontological ethics approach accentuates one’s duty to rules (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2014, para. 1). The morality of an action is based on following rules. The “rules” help guide individuals morally in decision making. Therefore, the person should make a moral choice as long as he or she sticks to the guidelines. The third approach is the utilitarianism,...
Is it fair to judge someone by their sex? In traditional Chinese culture, many judgments were made about a person just by observing their sex. The women was looked upon as an inferior being. They had little or no status in society, and little was expected from them. They were discriminated against when they tried to stand up for themselves. Chinese culture was customarily male dominated. The male was expected to do most of the work, and the woman was expected to stay at home with their mouth shut. This custom leaves an unwelcome feeling in a woman's heart. They feel like nobody cares, and it makes it much harder to live with an optimistic view on life.
Sadly, the characters revealed in The Joy Luck Club have personal histories so complicated by cultural and emotional misunderstandings that their lives are spent in failed attempts to cross the chasms created by these circumstances.
Growing up we are put in situations where we learn what is the moral thing to do and non moral just by our upbringing like religion, culture, and or race. This is called Ethics which is one of the major branch of philosophy that systematize, defend, and recommend concepts of right and wrong conduct. With that being said there are different kind of ethical approaches different philosophers discovered/ believed in which lay in the structure of consequentialist (the consequence of an action), Deontological ( duty, obligation, motivation, intention), and teleological ( striving to be a certain kind of person or fulfilling a kind of purpose ). In this paper I’m going to be defending Kant’s deontological theory which
Analyzing the movie helps to look at love in a broader window. Humans normally will assume that they are “the only ones” to experience love, and see love threw their own glasses. But one can see that love has no limits, shape, or form, and every human being can experience it in some level.