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. As a child, Lena was always kept away from strangers by her mother, fueling her curiosity and imagination. In order to keep the “bad man” from planting babies in Lena, her mother had barricaded the door to the basement and told her not to enter. However, Lena’s curiosity finally enabled her to pry open the door, but she fell into a dark chasm. When she is rescued by her mother, she said “…after that I began to see terrible things. I saw these things with my Chinese eyes, the part of me I got from my mother.” (103) Lena completely overlooked the warnings that were presented to her by an authority figure, her mom. Her mom constantly reminded her of the terrible events that could happen, but Lena felt she was so separated from the world she lived in that she became very curious. She wanted to see the world veiled by her mother’s restrictions, and even face danger she was always kept way from. As a result, she suffered the consequences of seeing everyth... ... middle of paper ... ...n't eat any of the ice cream he brings home every Friday evening.” (162) This shows that even as an adult, Lena still needs guidance as to where to go with her life. Without her mother’s visit, she may have never thought about how unfair their system of spending was. It also shows how they have miscommunications between them. Harold does not bring up Lena not eating any of the ice cream because Lena had never shared her story as child to him. Lena does not tell Harold that she hates ice cream because she believes she deserves this punishment for “killing” Arnold when she was a child. Through the terrifying events she experienced as a child and her parents’ miscommunications, she begins to realize how her mother tried to protect her from the mistakes that she made. Lena does not truly accept this at first, but ultimately discovers that she should strive to do better.
Within Tan’s writing comparisons there lies a powerful teaching about changes occurring to different people throughout times, how those people cope differently within those times, and the importance of time, by identifying with the impacts created from events and influences carried by every character. As a result, this defines the evolution of the changes the characters experience over the course. Again Culture Learning describes that “A new type of person whose orientation and view of the world profoundly transcends his or her indigenous culture is developing from the complex of social, political, economic, and educational interactions of our time (41).” Furthermore, it has been quoted that “Time shows all things”, Amy Tan used time as scope to show the reader what most fail to realize. She analyzes the positive and negative aspects of the Chinese and American cultural identities that exist, as well as revealing said lasting effects from generation to generation. "After the gold was removed from my body I felt lighter, more free. They say this is what happens if you lack metal. You begin to think as an independent person (63)." Upon realization of the effects of cultural influence, Tan establishes creditability to both her own experiences and the overall message of “The Joy Luck Club”, in order to educate and enlighten the reader on the bigger
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.
an example of one of the decisions she makes throughout the book. The act of doing the correct
...it has many problems. Ying-ying helps her daughter by realizing her own flaws in her marriage and also seeing how unhappy her daughter is. Ying-ying helps her daughter by telling her about her own marriage and the struggles she went through. Lena is able to understand that she needs to do something about her marriage through the representation given by her mother.
Helene was raised by her grandmother because she mother was a prostitute in the New Orleans. When Helene has a family of her own, she refuses to make her background be known. Helene raises Nel with fear because she doesn’t want her to have the lifestyle she grew up in. Helene controls Nel’s life and makes her see the world how it is. Nel and her mother go on a train to New Orleans to attend the funeral for her great grandmother. On the train, Nel witnessed racial situation between her mother and the white conductor. “Pulling Nel by the arm, she pressed herself and her daughter into the foot space in front of a wooden seat… at least no reason that anyone could understand, certainly no reason that Nel understood,” (21). Nel was very uncomfortable throughout the trip and wasn’t able to communicate with her mother because she never learned how to since her mother was not supportive of her. Nel views her mother very negatively for the way she raised her. Nel starts to determine her life and great her identity when she became friends with Sula. The effect of negative maternal interactions on an individual is explained by Diane Gillespie and Missy Dehn Kubitschek as they discuss
The movie, The Joy Luck Club, focuses around the lives of four Chinese mothers and their Chinese-American daughters. The story takes place a few months after Junes mother, Suyuan has died. The mothers and daughters hold very different principles, where the mothers are still very traditional to their Chinese upbringings the daughters are much more “American.” The movie can be viewed from the Feminist Literary Theory, since the 8 main characters are female. The women’s life stories are told through a series of flashback scenes that deal heavily with female gender roles and the expectations of women. While the mothers and their daughter grew up in vastly different worlds, some of their experiences and circumstances correlate solely due to that fact that they experienced them because they are females.
In her own mind the little girl only sees that she herself had been waiting on her mother “to start shouting, so I could shout back and cry and blame her for all my misery.” Even though the girl doesn’t want to see all the pain she inflicts on her mother as she gives up, that doesn’t stop her from seeing how her mother’s “face went blank, her mouth closed, her arms went slack, and she backed out of the room, as if she were blowing away like a small brown leaf, thin, brittle, lifeless,” when the child shatters all the dreams her mother had for her. The point of view is also crucial to understanding the tone of the story and how the girl moves from being restless to defiant and then finally to being at peace with her decisions. Her rebelliousness is the driving point of her mother’s dissatisfaction, but it is also caused by her mother pushing her to be a prodigy. As the girl becomes fed up with her mother’s attempt to make her great, she starts thinking about the possibilities that could be hers instead. One day when she is done with all of the testing and practicing, she looks into the mirror and “the girl staring back at me was angry, powerful. This girl and I were the same. I had new thoughts, willful thoughts, or rather thoughts filled with lots of won’ts.” The
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.
Near the beginning of the movie her brother dies from falling out of a third story window and she is forced to buy a coffin for him because her parents are unable to communicate this is largely because of the lack of accommodations that were available during the time. As the movie progresses and she faces more of lives hardships she starts to realize that she is the connection between the hearing and non-hearing worlds for her parents. For her graduation her father makes a kind jester of purchasing a hearing aid, which was one of the early models. Unfortunately her misunderstanding led to he feeling embarrassed of her parents although, it is unfair that she hid away her parents from her social life in the first place. One of the main characters that really kept her grounded was Mr. Petrakis. A kind elderly man who runs a pawnshop down the street. He also tends to be her way of venting because she doesn’t know how to tell her parents how upset she is. After her graduation she starts as a secretary where she meets her eventual husband William Anglin who repeatedly asks her out, but is unable to up until he is leaving for basic training for WWII. After they date are dating for a while ...
Overall, each mother in The Joy Luck Club went through something emotionally exhausting and saddening in her life. The mothers use their experiences to try to direct the course of their daughters' lives, to make them simpler and more carefree. Initially, however, the daughters only see that their mothers want to make decisions for them, not to help them. Ultimately, the daughters realize their mothers' intentions, but not all accept them. The important thing, however, is that each daughter learns a valuable lesson and comes to peace with her mother.
To guide the reader into following the storyline of The Joy Luck Club, Tan utilizes literary techniques in order to emphasize events and ideas in the novel. One of the various techniques used in the novel is foreshadowing. Lena and her mother, Ying-ying, is one of the four mother-daughter relationships which exemplifies foreshadowing. Lena describes her mother to have the ability to foretell unfortunate events which she views as a pessimistic viewpoint. For example, when Lena was eight years old, Ying-ying warned if Lena did not eat every piece of rice in her bowl that she would end up marrying a bad man. Although concerned with her mother’s pessimistic views, Lena comes to understand Ying-ying when she realizes everything she projected
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...
She hides her actions and attempt to justify them until she is expose by the letter from the paper regarding her novel entry. She is ignorant to her unrealistic judgements about Cecilia and Robert and attempts to fix the problem when she made it worse. She realizes her mistake when the letter questions the conflict of her novel and she witnesses her attempt to hide the true horror behind her decision. While she attempts at hiding her problem in the draft, she made it more noticeable to the paper and drain the luster of the plot. Her realization of her ignorance honor the lovers’ romance and made her strive to atone her former
Margaret Atwood’s story Lusus Naturae documents what it is like to be seen as a monster by both your own family and your larger community. Despite the fact that she is person with thoughts and feelings, the Narrator’s family shuns and neglects her where as the rest of the village forms a mob and kills her. The reason as to why this happens is because both the Narrator’s family and village are afraid of what they do not know and are ignorant to the fact that she is a person.
Being brought up in a home where your grandfather went from having just only a farm to live off of; to now where he doesn’t have to worry about if he has enough money for the bills. And then having a successful step-father who was a well-known women’s clothing designer in Dominican republic who left it all to come to United States, began working for people and now own two popular businesses that are both almost at their all-time high. Living in an environment where everyone breathes in faith and success to exhale all the doubts and discouragement makes you stride to do your best with all the things you do.