The mother-daughter relationship is often complex and confusing. Amy Tan explores this relationship with novel The Joy Luck Club narrated by four daughters and three mothers: Jing-mei Woo, Rose Hsu Jordan, Lena St. Clair, Waverly Jong, An-mei Jordan, Ying-Ying St. Clair, and Lindo Jong. June narrates in her late mother's place. The mothers talk about their difficult pasts in China and how they have been changed. The trauma from their past causes their daughters not to be able to connect to . The women are finally able to connect to each other. The women are forced to learn from the past, overcome adversity, and learn to understand one another. Suyuan Woo has always told her daughter, Jing-mei, the story of the Joy Luck Club, but Jing-mei …show more content…
The Joy Luck Club Aunties want the best from their daughters, but “he failure of communication between the cultures and the generations is an important theme” (Paddock). Suyan pushes Jing-mei to be a piano prodigy by making her take lessons from a deaf piano teacher. Jing-mei determined to try does not practice but keeps rhythm so Mr. Chong cannot tell that she is playing poorly. When Jing-mei embarrasses her mother at the talent contest by playing terribly, her mother still encourages her to continue practicing. Jing-mei yells at her saying that she wishes that she was dead like her twin sisters. This made her mother stop trying to get to play the piano but it caused an irreparable rift between them. When Lena’s mother, Ying-Ying, visits her house, Ying-Ying supposedly accidentally knocks over a glass vase off a wobbly table in the guest room. When Lena goes upstairs to check on her mother Ying-Ying says, “Fallen down,” then Lena tells her, “it doesn’t matter, I knew it would happen” (165). Ying-Ying replies simply “then why you don’t stop it” (165). Ying-Ying is also talking about the martial problems that Lena is facing. Ying-Ying is telling her to take control and solve the problems before it is too late. Lindo Jong’s overbearing qualities provoke her daughter to quit chess. Waverly was a chess prodigy and was less than 429 points away from being grand master status. As Lindo continued to micromanage Waverly: her outfits, the tournaments she attended, and coached her even though Lindo did not know much about chess. Waverly became in the restless. One day, while Lindo was bragging about Waverly and showing her off at the market, Waverly told her mom that it was embarrassing. Lindo became confused and angry questioning Waverly, “Embarrass you be my daughter?” (99). Waverly is tired of her mother's constant control but instead of talking to her
Jing-mei Woo has to become a member of the Joy Luck Club in place of her mother, Suyuan Woo, who passed away. Before Suyuan's passing Jing-mei does not know much about her mother, as the story continues to develop Jing-mei realizes how much she did not know about her mother and learns more and more new things about her on her journey of finding her sisters. “Your father is not my first husband. You are not those babies” (26), this quote is from Suyuan Woo and shows Jing- mei that her mother has a lot of secrets that she does not know about. “Over the years, she told me the same story, except for the ending, which grew darker, casting long shadows into her life, and eventually into mine” (21). This quote shows how Jing-mei did not know much
At the beginning of the novel, Suyuan Woo begins telling the story of The Joy Luck Club, a group started by a small family of Chinese women during World War II, where "we feasted, we laughed, we played games, lost and won, we told the best stories. And each week, we could hope to be lucky.
In The Joy Luck Club, Suyuan Woo is forced to abandon her twin daughters at the side of the road in a desperate act to give them a chance to live. Throughout her life she is haunted by this memory:
In The Joy Luck Club, the novel traces the fate of the four mothers-Suyuan Woo, An-mei Hsu, Lindo Jong, and Ying-ying St. Clair-and their four daughters-June Woo, Rose Hsu Jordan, Waverly Jong, and Lena St. Clair. Through the experiences that these characters go through, they become women. The mothers all fled China in the 1940's and they all retain much of their heritage. Their heritage focuses on what is means to be a female, but more importantly what it means to be an Asian female.
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.
The next significant event in Jing-Mei ’s life was when she started to play the piano. Mr. Chong, her piano teacher, was deaf and somewhat blind, so Jing-Mei used this to her advantage by not playing the right note when she knew it was wrong. Jing-Mei never would correct herself because she knew that the teacher was not able to hear the
“I asked myself, What is true about a person? Would I change in the same way the river changes color but still be the same person?” (1.3.53) Theme identity plays an important role in the novel as it focuses on the lives of Chinese-American daughters and their Chinese-born mothers. The novel is broken up into certain scenes told in different perspectives, as well, it examines the ups and downs of life in both the mothers and daughters. Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club has the daughters develop their understanding of their Chinese heritage, through their mother’s love, by learning about the past, and their cultural heritage;
The Joy Luck Club’s collection of short stories effectively communicates the different women's pasts and perspectives through different narrators, each with a different tone. Ying-Ying St. Clair’s regrets of “remaining quiet for so long [that her] daughter does not hear [her]” contribute to her bashful, yet wise tone (67). Conversely, her daughter, Lena St. Clair, was “comforted… somewhat to think that” others around her “had a more unhappy life” and held a naive and honest tone (113). Differing narrators’ juxtaposing tones create stark differences in perspectives and backgrounds, which is similar to the product of antithesis. These differences encourage the reader to fully consider the differences in background and viewpoints and adds a level of humanity to the characters. Ultimately, switching narrators switches perspectives and prose styles and encourages the reader to fully understand the characters’ reasonings for their actions. Additionally, the beautiful, flourishing imagery and figurative language transports the reader into The Joy Luck Club. An-Mei’s life felt as if she “had fallen out of the bowels of a stupid goose, two eggs that nobody wanted” (42). This metaphor provides the reader with a strong, clear image of the rejection that An-Mei faced as a child. Tan’s connotative language brings the characters’ perspectives to life and provides an emotional connection to the characters’ lives and struggles. Her fully immersive writing style encourages the reader to empathize with the characters. The reader can easily tolerate the characters’ odd behaviors when he or she can justify their actions through past experiences. Tan’s mature and unique writing style allows readers to understand empathy and coexistence through her literature and carry this through their lives to better strive to
... and in her hurry to get away, she (falls) before she even reach(s) the corner,” (87). This foreshadows the relationship between the mothers and daughters in The Joy Luck Club. The daughters can not understand the reasoning behind their mothers’ decisions. However, the mothers realize their daughters are so much like them and they do not want this to happen. The daughters grow up being “Americanized,” but as they grow older they begin to want to understand their Chinese culture. All of the characters learned many valuable lessons that will be passed on to their own children.
Jing-Mei tries to live up to her mother’s expectations but feels that her mother expects more from her than she can deliver. She doesn’t understand why her mother is always trying to change her and won’t accept her for who she is. She feels pressure from her family when she is compared to her cousin Waverly and all her accomplishments. Soon the conflict grows to resentment as her mother tests her daily on academics, eventually causing Jing-Mei to give up while her mother struggles to get her attention and cooperation. Her mother avoids arguing with her daughter early in the story, continuing to encourage her to strive for fame. Her mother’s next assignment for her daughter is piano lessons. This goes along pretty well until her mother forces her to participate in a talent show. The daughter’s failure on her performance at the talent show causes embarrassment to her mother. Conflict is evident when two days later, after the talent show, she reminds her daughter that it’s time for piano practice and the daughter refuses to obey her mother. The conflict that the daughter feels boils over in an outburst of anger and resentment towards her mother for trying to make her something that she is not. Harsh words are spoken causing the mother to retreat and not speak of this event ever
She works against her mother on many issues, doing what she wants to do and often times disobeying her. Her disobedience is shown in the rebellion against the nightly talent tests. She states, “So now when my mother presented her tests, I performed listlessly, my head propped on one arm. I pretended to be bored” (2). The fighting between Jing- mei and her mother also shows Jing-mei to be independent. She acts differently than her mother wants her to but Jing-mei refuses to change. She follows her own thinking and subsequently disobeyes her mother, saying, “‘I'm not going to play anymore,’ I said nonchalantly. ‘Why should I? I'm not a genius.’... ‘No!’ I said, and I now felt stronger, as if my true self had finally emerged. So this was what had been inside me all along. ‘No! I won't!’ I screamed” (6). Jing-mei thinks independently and refuses to do what others ask of her. Jing-mei does not waver in her disregard for her mother’s wishes for her and does not compromise or try to work out any issues. She says things without any remorse, only caring about herself, saying she “wished she were dead! Like them [sisters]”(7) and "then I wish I weren't your daughter, I wish you weren't my
Jing-Mei recalls back to where her mom made the San Francisco version of the Joy Luck Club in 1949 and near the same time Jing-Mei was born (20). The mother talked about how she was leaving the town of Kweilin and that she left her two babies on the way to Chungking “… I had lost everything except for three fancy silk dresses…” (26). Jing-Mei arrives at the Joy Luck Club and realizes that there are a lot of changes that have occurred, things that were not traditional to the original one that her mom made (28). The aunties at the club decide to give money to Jing-Mei so that she can go visit her long lost sisters in Hong Kong, China
The Joy Luck Club daughters incontestably become Americanized as they continue to grow up. They lose their sense of Chinese values, or Chinese tradition in which their mothers tried to drill into their minds. The four young women adopt the American culture and way of life, and they think differently than their traditional Chinese mothers do, upsetting the mothers greatly. The daughters do not even understand the culture of their mothers, and vice versa. They find that the American way of thinking is very different from that of the Chinese.
The movie “Joy Luck Club” is about the relationship between four Chinese mothers and their American-Chinese daughters. The four mothers are immigrants from China living in San Francisco California. They gather often to play and told stories about there lives in China. They reveal there flashbacks stories to there daughters. All of them lives are shaped by the clash of American and Chinese cultures as they endeavor to understand their family bonds. Each mother wants the best for their daughters, but they struggle through apprehension, feelings, and failures. In the film theirs conflict between mothers and daughters. The two mother-daughter pairs I will discuss are: Lindo and Waverly, and An-Mei and Rose.
The hardest problem communicating emerges between Suyuan and Jing-Mei. Suyuan is a very strong woman who lost everything she ever had in China: "her mother and father, her family home, her first husband, and two daughters, twin baby girls" (141). Yet she finds the strength to move on and still retains her traditional values. She remarries and has Jing-Mei and creates a new life for herself in America. She is the one who brings together three other women to form the Joy Luck Club. The rift is the greatest between Suyuan and June. Suyuan tries to force her daughter to be everything she could ever be. She sees the opportunities that America has to offer, and does not want to see her daughter throw those opportunities away. She wants the best for her daughter, and does not want Jing-Mei to ever let go of something she wants because it is too hard to achieve. "America is where all my mother's hopes lay. . .There were so many ways for ...