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How does the joy luck club shatter stereotypes
Gender stereotypes in literature a level essays
Gender stereotypes in literature a level essays
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It was a dark cold night in April, where all windows were sealed, a chimney was flamed with a cozy fire, the wind was whiffing, and the clock was ticking rhythmically. Caroline gathered with her friends at that night, it was too silent until Tyler opened up with a game. “Guys! Let’s do something…..something……sinister!….something terrifying!…..how about, BLOODY MARY!”. The room remained muted, they were all speechless but a part of them wanted to play that game. Caroline panicked about it, it would be too eerie if you read the legend before playing
The night was so still that they heard the frozen snow crackle under their feet. The crash of a loaded branch falling far off in the woods reverberated like a musket-shot, and once a fox barked, and Mattie shrank closer to Ethan, and quickened her steps.
"I am waiting like a tiger in the trees, now ready to leap out, ready to cut her spirit loose." The Joy Luck Club, an Oliver Stone production, depicts four women and their strife bringing up their American born daughters. Directed by Wayne Wang, this rated R movie featured actors and actresses such as Ming-na Wen, Rosalind Chao, Russell Wong, and Lisa Lu.
“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.
The ability to tell one’s own story, to speak one’s mind, is the best antidote to powerlessness. Tan’s writing instills agency and visibility in Chinese American women. The silence is broken, and their new voices are constructed in collective storytelling, a language of community, without denying or erasing the different positions such collaboration encounters. Tan compels each of her characters to tell their own story in their own words, thus (re)creating the meanings of their life. The interrelated narratives make sense only if readers can discern the specificities of each woman’s story as located within the novel.
In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club, four Chinese born mothers and their four American born daughters tell stories from their own point of view about their relationships with one another. These four mothers demonstrate the finest parenting by trying to keep their heritage alive and educate their daughters, while being immigrants. Through the mothers' actions, they are able to teach and influence their daughters about their Chinese heritage, about everyday life and situations, and how to stand up for themselves all while being in an overwhelming American society.
No matter where one grows up, they will always strive for their parent’s approval. The location, the time, or their age will not determine if they would love for their parents to approve of them. The problem usually uproots because the parents grow up in a different generation than their kids. Some parents want their kids to do better than them, or grow up as they did. In Hosseini’s Kite Runner and in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, express the problem that children have getting their parent’s approval very well.
The four main men in Possessing the Secret of Joy have roles that contradict a stereotypical male; they are the cure to Tashi's happiness. Alice Walker gives Adam, Mzee, Pierre, and Benny roles that show a softer side to men. These four men are very different from each other but they do have some resemblance of each other. These men who were all very devotedly attached to Tashi took care of her and never gave up on her. Instead of deceiving and being indolent, these four men were very likeable. The men tend to symbolize and represent different aspects of Tashi's life.
In the film, The Breakfast Club (1985), John Bender, the slovenly rebel at Shermer High School in Chicago, is serving a Saturday detention with four very different students. Right from the beginning, Bender exhibits the qualities of a destructive and thoughtless criminal, i.e., he taunts everyone else in order to hide his personal inadequacies. Whenever Bender is questioned by his peers about a personal issue, or whenever he cannot provide a clear answer to a question, he—albeit defensively— responds in a facetious and irritated manner. Bender demonstrated this when Andrew Clark, the “sporto”, told him that he did not count, and that “if [he] disappeared forever it wouldn’t make any difference.” Distraught from Andrew’s blunt comment, Bender sarcastically retorted, “Well, I’ll just run right out and join the wrestling team...” As time goes on, Bender slowly sheds his rough attitude and starts opening up his true self to the other students.
It was the day of May 23. The flowers were blossoming and the birds were chirping. The trees were swaying in unison with the cool breeze. The kids were coming out of school, happy it was their last day, laughing and playing as their parents were talking. Most of the students were talking about the run and were wondering what they ran the mile in. Henry was not wondering, he was running home to drop off his backpack and start running.
Amy Tan, the author of The Joy Luck Club, displays life lessons mothers pass down to their daughters through the character An-mei, while Janice Mirikitani mirrors the morales presented in Tan’s novel through her own work, “For a Daughter Who Leaves”. The Joy Luck Club follows a series of mothers and their daughters and how they perceive and react to the cultural gap between them. An-mei’s story follows her through her life in China and her new life in America. In China, she witnesses the abuse her mother goes through and eventually her mother’s suicide. She does not want her daughter, Rose, to repeat the same mistakes her mother and herself made, so she tries to teach Rose how to live a happy and full life without regrets. In Mirikitani’s
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 Journey from Tragedy to Triumph Have you ever wondered why so many people always choose to root for the underdog in a dramatic movie or why so many people say, “What does not kill you only makes you stronger” when you are going through a rough patch in life? Well, the answer to these ponderings is based on the thought that one can only achieve a triumph or victory when faced with struggles that make him/her sacrifice something important. The poem “Dream of the Rood” vividly exhibits a theme of triumph emerging as a result of tragedy; however, the query remains as to the elicitations of these remarkable occurrences. Ultimately, the transformation from tragedy to triumph requires a sacrifice on the part of the “defeated.” This poem perfectly demonstrates a parallel between the suffering and transformation of Christ and the suffering and glorification of the Rood.
The year is 2003. It’s the beginning of July in a small suburb town. A little girl sits in her backyard on a covered swing. The sun sat in a cloudless sky, casting shadowy patterns across the cushion on the swing. She can hear her younger sisters laughing and splashing in the pool that is just a few feet away. But she was not interested in swimming, because her attention was on the book on her lap that she had just gotten yesterday. Her feet brushing against the grass with every motion of the swing. Her eyes eagerly scanning the pages, trying to soak up as much of the story she could. Before her mom told her to put the book down and spend time with her family.
The wind whistles through the open door, dusting the living room with fresh, glistening, white snow. Inside there is an elegant Christmas tree, twinkling in the corner of the room, adorned with unique ornaments, reminiscent of trips shared between a man and his wife. On top of the tree is a lone star devoid of any light. The charming, little, one-story farmhouse is not vacant, though it is so silent that it seemed like a Charlie Chaplin film. An elderly man, George, snoozes in his tattered old rocking chair next to the warm, crackling fireplace. George abruptly awakens, noticing the chill sneaking into the house. He groans and shuffles toward the door in his threadbare robe and raggedy slippers. As he is about to close the door, George peers out at the drifting snow. The white storm brings him back to a memory precisely fifty years ago.
Watching the window not knowing why she tossed and turned feeling an uneasiness that she could not shake. The thunder rumbled softly and the lightning on the horizon flashed light across the bedroom walls. The wind began to whistle loudly around the log home. Jenny felt uneasiness, and softly reached to touch the shoulder of Blade. Not awakening him she decided to slip quietly out of bed to peek in the distance of the upcoming tragedy that she never thought would happen. As she moved sleathfully around the house, the windows seemed to rattle an alarm. The wind now not only whistled but wailed in the surrounding pine woods. Not knowing what to do Jenny sat in the living room window searching for a tragedy she felt was about to con some her life