The Joy Luck Club, written by Amy Tan, shows the lives of four Chinese immigrant women and their American born daughters. The Chinese women, Suyuan, Lindo, An-mei, and Ying Ying, escape from their hometown, China, to America because in china, women do not have any rights and power and must obey their husbands or men. Although they live in America for a long time, the four Chinese women still have Chinese minds and thoughts and maintain the Chinese culture. However, their American-born daughters, June, Rose, Waverly, and Lena, have American minds and deny to accept the Chinese culture. The daughters’ different culture from their mothers’ causes the conflict between mothers and daughters. Moreover, this novel has the motif of wind, which is strong and powerful, but invisible. This invisible strength controls one’s decision and path as he or she becomes more confident and mature. And, the invisible strength, which is shown by four daughters, brings positive effect as they realize their mothers’ love and strengthen their mind.
June shows the motif of wind as she realizes Suyuan’s actual intention and accepts Chinese culture. When June is young, she does not like playing piano. However, Suyuan forces June to keep playing piano because Suyuan believes June “can be prodigy and best anything” (141). Suyuan’s efforts to help June find her interest and talent proves she loves her daughter. Nevertheless, June does not want to play piano because she thinks Suyuan forces her to play piano to make her prodigy and perfect. And, before the talent show, June talks to herself “I had new thoughts, willful thoughts, or rather thoughts filled with lots of wont’s. I won’t let her change me… I won’t be what I’m not” (144). This statement shows Jun...
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...e Joy Luck Club shows the invisible strength, the motif of wind. June realizes her mom’s intention and her misunderstanding of her mom’s past. And, her realization changes her to accept her Chinese ethnicity. Waverly illustrates the invisible strength through her chess game. Her invisible strength, self-confidence, becomes uncontrollable, however, Lindo controls it. Rose finds her invisible strength by her mother helping her to show her opinion. And, Lena also depicts the invisible strength as she decides to fight against her husband to fix their marriage that is based on sharing payment. In common, their mothers’ stronger invisible strength, which they get from their hard lives, controls the daughter’s invisible strength. Then, the daughter’s invisible strengths change their life to more valuable and happier as they find their own identities and self-confidence.
Amy Tan 's novel, The Joy Luck Club, explores the relationships and experiences of four Chinese mothers with that of their four Chinese-American daughters. The differences in the upbringing of those women born around the 1920’s in China, and their daughters born in California in the 80’s, is undeniable. The relationships between the two are difficult due to lack of understanding and the considerable amount of barriers that exist between them.
The journey from Chongqing to America was one with many obstacles and Suyuan sacrificed so much for her daughter hoping that one day June will be successful. The support and care that Suyuan provided for June ended when she suddenly passes away which forces June discerns how little she actually knows about her own mother. This seemingly ordinary life of June disappears as she discovers her mother’s past which included siblings that have been abandoned and thus attempts to find her long lost sisters. This idea was brought up by the Aunties of the Joy Luck Club that her mother founded which can be seen as the call to an adventure. The purpose of this journey was not only to find her sisters but to also discover her mother for who Suyuan truly was. In June’s eyes, Suyuan was always impossible to please and she was never on the same page as her mother who believes a person could be anything they wanted in America-the land of opportunities. But as the Joy Luck Club reminds June of how smart, dutiful, and kind her
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.
The Joy Luck Club is an emotional tale about four women who saw life as they had seen it back in China. Because the Chinese were very stereotypic, women were treated as second class citizens and were often abused. Through sad and painful experiences, these four women had tried to raise their daughters to live the American dream by giving them love and support, such things which were not available to them when they were young. These women revealed their individual accounts in narrative form as they relived it in their memories. These flashbacks transport us to the minds of these women and we see the events occur through their eyes. There were many conflicts and misunderstandings between the two generations due to their differences in upbringing and childhood. In the end, however, these conflicts would bring mother and daughter together to form a bond that would last forever.
June-May fulfills her mother’s name and life goal, her long-cherished wish. She finally meets her twin sisters and in an essence fulfills and reunites her mother with her daughter through her. For when they are all together they are one; they are their mother. It is here that June-May fulfills the family portion of her Chinese culture of family. In addition, she fully embraces herself as Chinese. She realizes that family is made out of love and that family is the key to being Chinese. “And now I also see what part of me is Chinese. It is so obvious. It is my family. It is in our blood.” (Tan 159). Finally, her mother’s life burden is lifted and June-May’s doubts of being Chinese are set aside or as she says “After all these years, it can finally be let go,” (Tan 159).
Lastly, June and her mother Suyuan relationship is a culmination of all of the mothers and daughters relationships. Growing up they never saw eye to eye, they were blinded by what they assumed the other wanted of them. Each woman thought she had a role she needed to play in order to make everyone happy. The mothers felt as if their daughters were ashamed of them and the daughters felt as if they couldn’t measure up as perfect Chinese daughters and were thus a disappointment to their moms. All of the women were lost within what they thought was their feminine place in society.
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.
The Constitution sets up the government in the United States of America. This is split into three branches: Congress, which is the Legislative, the President also known as Executive and the Supreme Courts also known as the judicial. Each branch has its own power and structure.
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
Oftentimes the children of immigrants to the United States lose the sense of cultural background in which their parents had tried so desperately to instill within them. According to Walter Shear, “It is an unseen terror that runs through both the distinct social spectrum experienced by the mothers in China and the lack of such social definition in the daughters’ lives.” This “unseen terror” is portrayed in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club as four Chinese women and their American-born daughters struggle to understand one another’s culture and values. The second-generation women in The Joy Luck Club prove to lose their sense of Chinese values, becoming Americanized.
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. 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).
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.
... 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.
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...
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.