The Joy Luck Club was her first big success and was translated into
seventeen languages and stood at New York Times best-seller list for
nine months. The plot follows the lives of four Chinese Immigrant
mothers and their American born daughters. Tan weaves an intricate
story as the the four families intertwine and reveal their own secrets
forming and strengthening the mother daughter bond.
The story begins on one daughter, Jing-mei, who takes the place of
her mother at the Joy Luck Club table in place of her mother (Suyan Woo)
who had died. This club was created by the four mothers of the story,
Suyan Woo, An-mei Hsu, Lindo Jong, and Ying-ying St. Clair during the
war. The mothers met and played Mah-Jong, ate good dinners, and
gambled. All to escape the cruelties of their lives, to brighten their
spirits.
Jing-mei learns of her mother's past, of her difficult decisions such
as leaving behind two daughters in China on the side of the road. The
club learns of the location of those two daughters and are saving to send
Jing-mei to meet them.
As the date nears each mother recalls in vivid detail their own pasts
in China.
An-mei (mother of Rose Hsu) as a child was forbidden to speak her
mother's name. She was told her mother dishonered the family by
remarrying after her husbands death. Her mother ends up killing herself
to give An-mei a better position in life.
Lindo (mother of Waverly Jong) had her marriage arranged when
she was very young. The young man she was destined to wed was spoiled
and immature. Lindo fabricated a an elaborate story about an angry
ancestor who would kill her husband should they stay married. She was
given money and pushed off to America and was told to not speak of the
curse to anyone.
Ying-ying (mother of Lena St. Clair) discovered as a child that the
magic and wonder of many things she believed in such as a favorite Moon
Festival was only an elaborate act. As an adult Ying is a strong character,
not letting things in general affect her.
The daughters also remember their own lives growing up in
California with their Chinese mothers. Many of the daughters grew up,
like Tan, feeling they belonged neither in China nor in America and
began to reject and question their own background.
Waverly was a chess champion, she quit when she and her friend
Questioning looks, dirty gazes, and the snide babbles were all too accustomed to Ruth McBride, when she walked down the street with her tow of children. James McBribe, one of the dozen children from her two elopements, was often ashamed as well as scared. They had to prolong the worse racial monikers. His mother, who was white, maintained unattended, “Whenever she stepped out of the house with us she went into a somewhat mental zone where her attention span went no farther than the five kids trailing her,” McBride subsequently wrote “My mom had absolutely no interest in a world that seemed incredulously agitated by our presence. The remarks and stares that we heard as we walked about the world went right over our head.” Her indomitable spirit and her son’s recollections became the basis of “The Color of Water”. In the work there is a great presence of God and the fortitude he unconditionally sends, especially to Ruth. Although Ruth’s clout frequently surpassed her circadian problems, she would more regularly rely on God for her vigor.
The setting of Code Orange affects the plot because them living in the heart of the city would mean that the disease smallpox would spread easier. The book Code Orange is a realistic fiction novel that was written by Caroline B Cooney. In the book the reader is introduced to Mitty Blake a 16 year old who doesn’t take school serious. And he was doing a project for bio so he didn’t get kicked out of the class. When he found scabs from a smallpox epidemic in 1902. In the novel code orange The setting affects the plot because It can spread quickly, there are a lot of people that it will affect, and he lives in the heart of the city.
Utilitarianism is a moral theory that seeks to define right and wrong actions based solely on the consequences they produce. By utilitarian standards, an act is determined to be right if and only if it produces the greatest total amount of happiness for everyone. Happiness (or utility) is defined as the amount of pleasure less the amount of pain (Mill, 172). In order to act in accordance with utilitarianism, the agent must not only impartially attend to the pleasure of everyone, but they must also do so universally, meaning that everyone in the world is factored into the morality of the action.
In the novels A Clockwise Orange by Anthony Burgess and Misery by Stephen King, they both express what is portrayed to be socially right and what is socially wrong. In A Clockwise Orange, the novel is taking place in a futuristic London. Alex Delarge is the leader of a gang that they call the “Droogs”. After a night of drugs and intoxication they engage in violence by fighting a rival gang and stealing a car to travel to the home of a writer F. Alexander where they nearly killed him. After beating Mr. Alexander’s nearly to death he rapes his wife while singing. In Misery, there is a famous novelist named Paul Sheldon who is the author of a successful series of novels that features a character named Misery Chastain. Paul has decided to focus his mind on more serious novels and writes a new manuscript for an unrelated novel. Paul is later caught in a blizzard while driving home to New York City and his car goes off the road. His number one fan Annie Wilkes rescues him and she brings him to her house in a remote location where she attempts to take care of him. Both of these well-known novels and their respected films portray what is deemed to be socially right vs. socially wrong.
One of the central themes in writing of the second generation Asian Americans is the search of identity and individual acceptance in American society. In the last few decades, many Asian Americans have entered a time of increased awareness of their racial and cultural identity built on their need to establish their unique American identity. In the book The Joy Luck Club, which revolves around four mother-daughter Asian American families whose mothers migrated from China to America and raised their daughters as Americans, we see the cultural struggle and differences by looking at their marriages, suffering and sacrifice, and their use of language in the novel.
... did not afford her these things, Lindo is being very cautious, often critical, of her daughter and the choices that she has.
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 Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper," a nervous wife, an overprotective husband, and a large, dank room covered in musty wallpaper all play important parts in driving the wife insane. The husband's smothering attention, combined with the isolated environment, incites the nervous nature of the wife, causing her to plunge into insanity to the point she sees herself in the wallpaper. The author's masterful use of not only the setting (of both time and place), but also of first person point of view, allows the reader to participate in the woman's growing insanity.
Consequently, the standards of the globalized era during the twentieth century starts to reproduce in Tropic of Orange. Therefore, Karen Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange, attempts to erase our understanding of the geography that is known as “free trade” (Yamashita 160). A “free trade” that forms the origins of environmental racism, and exposes the gender politics of environmental justice as well (160). Given these points, the novel also made connections, between past and present and between global and local struggles for justice between characters. In addition to this, Tropic of Orange, makes the social and environmental costs of corporate globalization clear. What’s more important is that Tropic of Orange, offers different forms of hierarchy and domination, and even addresses the burdens placed not only on women, but on nature, and people of color. The environmental justice within the novel, is complex and multilayered just like the maps of Los
In Beloved, Toni Morrison portrays the barbarity and cruelty of slavery. She emphasizes the African American’s desire for a new life as they try to escape their past while claiming their freedom and creating a sense of community. In Beloved, "Much of the characters’ pain occurs as they reconstruct themselves, their families, and their communities after the devastation of slavery" (Kubitschek 115). Throughout the novel, Morrison uses color to symbolically represent a life complete with happiness, freedom, and safety, as well as involvement in community and family. In many scenes, Morrison uses color to convey a character's desire for such a life; while, in other instances, Morrison utilizes color to illustrate the satisfaction and fulfillment, which the characters experience once they achieve this life.
“The Yellow Wallpaper” tells the story of a woman who is trapped in a room covered in yellow wallpaper. The story is one that is perplexing in that the narrator is arguably both the protagonist as well as the antagonist. In the story, the woman, who is the main character, struggles with herself indirectly which results in her descent into madness. The main conflicts transpires between the narrator and her husband John who uses his power as a highly recognize male physician to control his wife by placing limitations on her, forcing her to behave as a sick woman. Hence he forced himself as the superior in their marriage and relationship being the sole decision make. Therefore it can be said what occurred externally resulted in the central conflict of” “The Yellow Wallpaper being internal. The narrator uses the wallpaper as a symbol of authenticy. Hence she internalizes her frustrations rather then openly discussing them.
Utilitarianism is a moral theory that approaches moral questions of right and wrong by considering the actual consequences of a variety of possible actions. These consequences are generally those that either positively or negatively affect other living beings. If there are both good and bad actual consequences of a particular action, the moral individual must weigh the good against the bad and go with the action that will produce the most good for the most amount of people. If the individual finds that there are only bad consequences, then she must go with the behavior that causes the least amount of bad consequences to the least amount of people. There are many different methods for calculating the utility of each moral decision and coming up with the best
The relationship between Celie and Albert went through many changes throughout this novel. Albert, or Mr._________, was a man who seem to be a person who was very angry, powerful and hateful. His father was a man who believed that love was not the point while trying to find a good wife, obedience was. The woman didn't have to be attractive, rich or one who was in love, all she had to do was cook, clean and tend to the children. Albert was taught that this was the way to an successful life. Albert feel in love with Shug, they did not marry. Mr.____ was controlled by his father even as an adult. His father wouldn't allow his son to marry Shug. His father didn't want him to actually love, because he never loved himself. Albert married a woman his father approved of, and he treated her how his father taught him to. Margret cooked, cleaned and tended to the children. After his father took shug away from him, he hated his father, but was so controlled by him that he could never stand up to his father. She later died and left behind a house to be cleaned, cooking to be done and children who needed to be tended to. He fell in love again with Nettie, but she was not allowed to marry him. Albert was forced to find a quick replacement for Margret. So instead he married Celie. He beat her not only because of the angry towards his father, but also because she was neither Shug nor Nettie. In the marriage of Celie and Albert there was no love or devotion. They were just stuck with the other. Celie married Albert because her step father told her too and Albert married because he wanted a full time maid. They just went one day to the next with Albert giving the orders and Celie carrying out these orders. It was like boss and employ, except Celie was anything but rewarded for carrying out the orders.
Act utilitarians like Bentham believe that an action is right or wrong depending on what good will the society results from it. Even if the action individually is not necessarily morally right as long as the ending result is beneficial for the society, that action is then considered right. For act utilitarians the end justifies the mean. Actions are also evaluated individually. It may be right for Tim to steal a pen in situation A but wrong for Ben to steal one in situation B. It will depend on the
I choose to read the book “The Color Purple” by Alice Walker. The book talks about the life of an African-American lady by the name of Celie that lived in the southern United States in the late 1930s. It addresses the numerous issues that included the low ranking of American social culture. In the book it talks about how she wrote books to God because the father she had would beat her and rape her. He also got her pregnant and then she gave birth to a beautiful baby boy. Her father end up taking the baby shortly after birth.