The Joy Luck Club and Fried Green Tomatoes
Two novels that I could read over and over again, "The Joy Luck Club" by Amy Tan and "Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café" by Fannie Flag. The two novels share similar qualities while conveying their different story lines.
"The Joy Luck Club" is a sage about several Chinese mothers and their American-born daughters. It is also about the mothers' experiences with immigrating, and/or their upbringing. It depicts the relationship between the mothers' and their daughters and how this relationship affects the daughters lives. Emphasis is placed on historical references and the struggle of women. All of the mothers were born between the mid 1920's and the late 1940's. The political and social histories of China were important factors in the character building youth of these women. Between 1931 and 1945 China was occupied by the Japanese, which led to their immigration to the United States. Chinese cultural traditions such as arranged marriages, different religions, and superstitious notions, all which repress women, also influenced their character. A great deal of importance is placed on the variety of traditions that were placed on them. The theme of tradition being passed down from mother to daughter is also stressed. This particular tradition is not explicitly expressed. In order for it to be preserved and handed down it is to be observed, absorbed, and understood. Yet one of the main (ideas) points of the novel is to show that these traditions were not imposed on the American-born daughters as they were on their mothers. In turn, this leads to the vast differences and conflicts between the mothers and their daughters. Some of the differences and conflicts are good while others are not.
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café is a novel about two women in the 1980's. An elderly Mrs. Threadgood tells a tale of two young women, which takes place over half a century ago, to Evelyn, a sad depressed middle-aged woman. The story is about the relationship between Idgie, a dare devilish tomboy and her good-hearted friend Ruth. Together, in the 1930's, they ran a southern café, offering good barbecue, good coffee, and all kinds of love and laughter in Whistle Stop, Alabama. As Mrs. Threadgood tells the story of the past, the present for Evelyn will never be the same.
In Cold Sassy GA, the town is filled with gossip surrounding the town’s newest newlyweds. Will Tweedy finds himself eyewitness to it all. Grandpa E Rucker Blakeslee has ‘tied the knot’ with the young milliner, Miss Love Simpson. With it being only three weeks after the death of his last wife, the family and town alike are shocked. Confused but curious about it all, Will observes what it means to be husband and wife and what it really means to love. Puzzled by the secrets shared between the two, he tries to figure out just why Grandpa Blakeslee asked Miss Love for her hand in marriage and why she even agreed. While Grandpa Blakeslee is experiencing his second adolescence, Will is trying to make it through his first. When Will gets hit by a train and is still alive to tell about it, Grandpa Blakeslee gives him a lesson on God’s Will. And Will starts to realize not everyone interprets things the same way. When the mill child, Lightfoot crosses Will’s path his heart skips a beat. With all Will’s new found attractions and desires he decided to try his luck with the girls. That’s when he experiences his first kiss, and also his first heartbreak. After the innocent Uncle Camp kill’s himself due to Aunt Loma’s constant criticism, Will starts to question how he treats people. He starts to wonder if maybe he helped his uncle pull the trigger. Soon after that Grandpa Blakeslee’s store isn’t doing all that well. Two unidentified strangers come and rob Grandpa Blakeslee blind, in the process beating him up ‘something awful’. With his weakness effecting his immune system, he catches a bad case of pneumonia and soon passes away. But not before Miss Love could tell him what he had been waiting to hear his whole life…. He would soon have a son to carry on the family name. Not at all scared of death or the unknown, Grandpa Blakeslee orders a letter to be read concerning his funeral and remains. But to everyone’s surprise he orders the cheapest and lowest class funeral and orders himself nothing, but a wooden box. Wanting no one to mourn over him and everyone to know that he was dead...
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 author describes the narrator’s relationship to peas as negative. “I began to force the wretched things down my throat.” The word is a negative term implying that he dislikes them. Another time the author develops the characters relationships with something is when he talks about the perfume that the grandmother wears. “...my mothers and sisters would throw open all the windows, strip the bedding and the curtains and the rugs, and spend several days washing and airing things out, trying frantically to make the pungent odor go away.” This shows that the narrator and his family did not find the smell appealing. When Beyer explains how Ellen, the narrator’s mom, was glaring at her mother and her son, it shows that she was mad that her son. “My mother was livid.” His mother was angry that he ate the peas for money. Now she makes hims eat peas for love, despite his hatred for them.
“Snapping Beans” is about a young college girl who is trying to juggle her 2 completely different worlds without disappointing her family. Her college home is clashing with the values that her family has. It is apparent that she obviously is not from the north and lives almost on a southern farm type atmosphere. “Cornstalk”, “porchfront”, “evening star”, and “a-goin” are all figures of speech used to describe this setting. They paint almost a countryside picture. She is yet to become accustomed to her college life and long to be back home. The speaker is most definitely a complex character with deep thoughts. She uses wording such as “a swig of strychnine”, “I was tearing/splitting myself apart”, and
First, the story takes place in the 1900s on Tol and Miss Minnie’s farm. They have crops, gardens, and livestock, and are avid in what they do (Half-Pint of Old Darling 124).
Fried Green Tomatoes, a story about something or whatever, regarding friendship, and what not, somewhere in a southern American small town, whilst focusing on the lives of four women of the past and present is a tale nonetheless that just so happens to exemplify many elements of southern gothic literature. Stemming as an example of such within the story, elements such as freakishness, imprisonment, violence, and outsider are very apparent as they are peppered all throughout making it quite evident in regards to this claim. This story without a doubt is truly a modern paradigm of southern gothic literature as it is clear that it follows the pattern of transforming archetypes to portray them in a more modern and realistic manner. From beginning
So about my book, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café, well the theme is mainly feminism and a little bit of my gay pride, (you’ll see when you meet Idgie.). The setting starts out in the nursing home where, Mrs. Cleo Threadgoode, the long-time resident of Whistle Stop, tells Mrs. Evelyn Couch all about her life starting in the year 1929, and the little town of Whistle Stop. Now I will tell you all about the rest of my book in the eyes of my most important character, Mrs. Cleo Threadgoode.
Perceptions of “Cannery Row” have been misleading throughout the book by the outsiders. Steinbeck have portrayed the realism of “Cannery Row” as a real society. The characters don't think money as its true success but living. In “Cannery Row” the characters Lee Chong, Mack , Doc, and Dora all have ups and downs in which the characters all depend on each other. Lee Chong is the owner of a grocery store and many people owned him debts. Doc was a marine biologist who collects sea animals and have a laboratory of his own. Dora is a respected woman who runs a whore house. Mack is the one who doesn’t have a job,no money, and no ambitions. You may think that the characters are eccentric and the community is imperfect, but in “Cannery Row” the community defines morality, warmheartedness, and humanity because even through poverty of many and lack of social grace,the characters in “Cannery Row” still help each other out.
As the four women entered America, which is far from their motherland China, they experience a change of culture, the American culture, which was dominant than the Chinese. The Chinese mothers are faced with a difficult task of how to raise their American-born daughters with an understanding of their heritage. The daughters clearly show a gap in culture between the Chinese culture and American culture. The mothers wanted their daughter to follow the Chinese traditions, but the daughters followed the American traditions and even some of them got married to American men. The mothers tried to tell their daughters the story about the Chinese ancestors but the daughter could not follow them and the daughters thought their mothers were backwards and did not know what they are saying. As much as the mothers tried to show love to their daughters, the daughters usually responded negatively. They often saw their mothers’ attempts to guidance as a failure to understand the American culture. Being Chinese and living in America, both the mothers and the daughters struggle with many issues like identity, language, translation, and others. The mothers try to reconcile their Chinese pasts with their American presents; the daughters try to find a balance between independence and loyalty to their heritage
The second plot is about the relationship of Ruth and Idgie. The two women meet they become best friends and fall in love with each other and Idgie becomes very distraught when Ruth leaves to go marry a man. After many years of being abused by her husband, Frank, Idgie comes and rescues pregnant Ruth and brings her back to Whistle Stop. The two women open The Whistle Stop Cafe and raise Ruth’s son. The author never says the two are lovers, but it is implied that they had more than just a
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.
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.
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.
This story takes place in the south during the civil rights movement when people were trying to eliminate poverty and racism from the society that they lived in. There are four important characters in this story, and the two main ones are Julian and his mother. Julian is a recent college graduate who lives with his mother but knows “some day [he’ll] start making money” (Mays 448). Julian sees the world as ever changing during the civil rights movement and does not like or condone racism. Although this is true he subconsciously is small minded and petty just like his mother. His mother often makes racist remarks and will not find herself sitting next to a black African American adult. She often would bring up the topic of race to Julian “every few days like a train on an open track” (Mays 449). She also makes her son ride the bus with her to the YMCA because of the new changes due to the civil rights movement and in some ways this makes Julian mad. As they begin to board the bus Julian and his mother argue but quickly board. Shortly later a black woman and her son named Carver board. Carver sits next to Julian’s mother, she does not mind, and Carver’s mother sits next to Julian. Carver’s mother is an impatient woman who ironically wears the same hat as Julian’s mother. The hat in many ways is a symbol of the ever changing south during the civil rights movement. It symbolizes the social equality between
...ws us that for young women to understand themselves they must understand their mothers. The mother daughter relationship in The Joy Luck Club is illustrated through a learning process especially in Waverly and Jing-Mei’s situations. Each women has to learn though her mother and her own feelings what it is like to become Chinese because that is basically what this book’s theme is. Through the novel the women are developing mentally through experience some positive and some negative. Each women finds herself through her mother and comes to peace with themselves