Joy Luck Club Confucianism

316 Words1 Page
bulb-icon

Recommended: The impact of confucianism on Chinese culture

The cultural ideals of the daughters and their mothers are different and difficult to reconcile, however this conflict, as shown in The Joy Luck Club and The Kitchen God’s Wife can be resolved through storytelling. One major tenet in Confucianism is filial piety which requires children to show absolute respect and obedience to their parents or guardians. However, in America, the relationship between a child and an adult is much more relaxed. In the Joy Luck Club, Jing-mei was forced by her mother to try to find something she was talented in such as piano playing. However, after a failed recital Jing-mei refuses to practice and her mother’s outburst epitomizes the cross-cultural differences, “Only two kinds of daughters...Those who are obedient

Show More
Related

  • The Relationship of Mothers and their Expectations of Daughters in Amy Tan’s "Two Kinds"

    745 Words  | 2 Pages

    “Only two kinds of daughters,” “Those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind!”(476). When a mother pushes her daughter to hard, the daughter rebels, but realizes in the end that their mothers only wanted the best for them and had their best interest at heart. In the beginning, Jing-mei, is “just as excited as my mother,”(469). Jing-mei eagerly hoped to make her mother proud. However, her mother’s obsession with becoming a prodigy discouraged Jing-mei.

    Read More

  • Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

    772 Words  | 2 Pages

    Traditions, heritage and culture are three of the most important aspects of Chinese culture. Passed down from mother to daughter, these traditions are expected to carry on for years to come. In Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, daughters Waverly, Lena, Rose and June thoughts about their culture are congested by Americanization while on their quests towards self-actualization. Each daughter struggles to find balance between Chinese heritage and American values through marriage and professional careers.

    Read More

  • Significant Identity In Short Story

    856 Words  | 2 Pages

    Jing-mei 's mother wants Jing-mei to be a prodigy and get popular. Thus, the mother rents a piano for Jing-mei to help her achieve this. Many years later, Jing-mei finds the piano in a broken state, so she decides to have it repaired. She starts playing the song she used to play, “Pleading Child.” But to the right of “Pleading Child,” she finds a second song named “Perfectly Contented.” She starts to play both songs, “And after I [Jing-mei] had played them both a few times, I realized they were two halves of the same song.” (6) Jing-mei’s mother tells Jing-mei that there are two kinds of people: the respectful kind and the disrespectful kind. At that time, Jing-mei also finds out that there are two kinds of people inside her. She could choose to be the kind where the person is a prodigy and respectful, or be the kind that is ugly in the eyes of people. When she plays “Pleading Child” and “Perfectly Contented,” Jing-mei realizes that her identity had changed completely because of her laziness and beliefs. Jing-mei learns that there are two kinds of people in the world, and she should choose the right

    Read More

  • Success vs. Wishes in the Joy Luck Club

    1198 Words  | 3 Pages

    One type of effect the Chinese mothers’ expectations has in their relationship with their “Americanized” daughter is negative since the mothers are unable to achieve anything. An-Mei Hsu expects her daughter to listen and obey as the young ones do in Chinese culture, but instead receives a rebellious and stubborn daughter, “‘You only have to listen to me.’ And I cried, ‘But Old Mr. Chou listens to you too.’ More than thirty years later, my mother was still trying to make me listen’” (186-187). Instead of the circumstances improving, the mother is never able to achieve anything; her forcing and pushing her daughter to the Chinese culture goes to a waste. They are both similar in this sense because both are stubborn; the daughter learns to be stubborn through American culture and wants to keep herself the way she is, whereas the mother wants to remove this teaching from American culture and does not give u...

    Read More

  • The Tao Of The Joy Luck Club

    1290 Words  | 3 Pages

    Taoism has been a major influence in China throughout much of its history and The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan, reflects this influence through its infusion of Taoist principals. One of the fundamental concepts within Taoism is that of Wu-hsing. Wu-hsing is a way of understanding a matter by dividing it into five and is often represented by five phases, elements of directions. This is an unfamiliar concept to a western perspective, which tends to divide things into four. Understanding this fifth additional element, however, is essential to understanding The Joy Luck Club.

    Read More

  • Who Is Waverly Jong In The Joy Luck Club

    1818 Words  | 4 Pages

    In the “Joy Luck Club” by Amy Tan, she writes about the stories that came from the mothers who lived in China and their harsh experiences they lived through. There are four mothers total and four daughters.Suyuan Woo is the mother of Jing-Mei Woo.An-mei Hsu is the mother of Rose Hsu Jordan. Lindo Jong is the mother of Waverly Jong and Ying-ying St.Clair is the mother Lena St.Clair. Each of the mothers came to America to live a better life and to give their kids a better opportunity to be successful. In the midst of that, each mother and daughter duo have a culture clash between the two. The mothers have their traditional Chinese way of do things and teaching their daughters lessons they learned when they were young. And the daughters sometimes

    Read More

  • The Struggle Of The Ethnic Self In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

    1493 Words  | 3 Pages

    The struggle of these second generational daughter’s to find their own niche is discussed more at length by Ben Xu from St. Mary’s college of California in his academic journal, Memory And The Ethnic Self: Reading Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club, where he states “The daughters, unlike their mothers, are American not by choice, but by birth. Neither the Chinese nor the American culture is equipped to define them except in rather superficial terms.” (Xu 15) his analysis paints a dark picture for average Chinese American daughter who is in a difficult position being neither fully-Chinese nor All- American whose struggle to choose a side, and the realization that neither one fit’s, creates a mini- identity crisis. To make matters more difficult The mother’s spurred on by fear that their daughter’s will lose total connection with their ethnic origins, push harder, which only makes their daughters further retreat within themselves. As a result there is nearly a complete aversion by the daughters in the novel to anything relating their mother’s traditional background, resulting in a loss of culture and a mini failure on behalf of the mothers.

    Read More

  • Mother-Daughter Relationships in Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club

    1520 Words  | 4 Pages

    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. The four daughters: Waverly, Lena, Rose, and Jing-Mei are all Americans. Even though they absorb some of the traditions of Chinese culture they are raised in America and American ideals and values.  This inability to communicate and the clash between cultures create rifts between mothers and daughters.

    Read More

  • Mothers and Daughters in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club

    1798 Words  | 4 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Confucianism

    562 Words  | 2 Pages

    Confucianism is a moral and religious system of China. Its origins go back to the Analects, the sayings attributed to Confucius, and to ancient writings, including that of Mencius. Confucius was born a mandarin under the name Kongzi. It was developed around 550 B.C. In its earliest form Confucianism was primarily a system of ethical concepts for the control of society. It saw man as a social creature that is bound to his fellow men by jen, or “humanity.” Jen is expressed through the five relationships—sovereign and subject, parent and child, elder and younger brother, husband and wife, and friend and friend. Of these, the filial relation is most important.

    Read More

  • The Joy Luck Club and The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts

    643 Words  | 2 Pages

    Amy Tan’s novel, The Joy Luck Club describes the lives of first and second generation Chinese families, particularly mothers and daughters. Surprisingly The Joy Luck Club and, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts are very similar. They both talk of mothers and daughters in these books and try to find themselves culturally. Among the barriers that must be overcome are those of language, beliefs and customs.

    Read More

  • Mother and Daughter Similarities in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club

    1951 Words  | 4 Pages

    The complexitities of any mother-daughter relationship go much deeper then just their physical features that resemble one another.  In Amy Tan’s novel The Joy Luck Club, the stories of eight Chinese women are told.  Together this group of women forms four sets of mother and daughter pairs. The trials and triumphs, similarities and differences, of each relationship with their daughter are described, exposing the inner makings of four perfectly matched pairs.  Three generations of the Hsu family illustrate how both characteristics and values get passed on through generations, even with the obstacles of different cultures and language.

    Read More

  • Symbolism in Two Kinds by Amy Tan and Everyday Use by Alice Walker

    522 Words  | 2 Pages

    Jing-Mei was forced to take piano lessons; this only further upset her as she felt that she was a constant disappointment. Her mother was mad at her on a regular basis because Jing-Mei stood up for herself and explained to her that she didn’t want to be a child prodigy.

    Read More

  • The Influence of Confucianism on Chinese Culture

    1731 Words  | 4 Pages

    Philip J. Ivanhoe. Confucian moral self cultivation. New York : P. Lang, vol. 3, 1993.

    Read More

  • The Relationship Between a Mother and Daughter in Two Kinds by Amy Tan

    972 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...ith Jing Mei and her mother, it is compounded by the fact that there are dual nationalities involved as well. Not only did the mother’s good intentions bring about failure and disappointment from Jing Mei, but rooted in her mother’s culture was the belief that children are to be obedient and give respect to their elders. "Only two kinds of daughters.....those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind!" (Tan1) is the comment made by her mother when Jing Mei refuses to continue with piano lessons. In the end, this story shows that not only is the mother-daughter relationship intricately complex but is made even more so with cultural and generational differences added to the mix.

    Read More

More about Joy Luck Club Confucianism

Open Document