Conflicts in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

1607 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Gender roles in the joy luck club

Joy Luck Club Conflicts

Many Misconceptions and Delusions

Conflicts play a crucial role in novels. Without conflict, novels would be uninteresting and very dull. Conflicts are seen in many different forms, as internal conflicts, when a character must deal with private problems, and external conflicts, when a character must deal with problems originating from an external source, like another person or society in general. Some common conflicts seen in other novels are person versus society, as in The Scarlet Letter when Hester is forced to face her mistake of adultery due to the obsession of the unforgiving town. An example of an internal conflict is present within Animal Dreams, when Cody must decide where she belongs and must also deal with the pain of her lost baby. These types of conflicts and more are visible within the novel entitled The Joy Luck Club written by Amy Tan. Three prominent conflicts seen in The Joy Luck Club are between Waverly and Lindo, Lindo and Suyuan, and between June and Waverly.

The first prominent conflict within this novel deals with Waverly and her mother Lindo. Waverly feels as though her mother is attempting to ruin her life by causing her to "see black where there once was white" (Tan 186). Lindo, Waverly believes, is attempting to influence her daughter for the worse. She does not want to be influenced by her mother's opinions, her criticisms of everything that she loves, yet Waverly fears that even if she "recognized her sneak attack, [she] was afraid that some unseen speck of truth would fly into [her] eye, blur what [she] was seeing and transform [it]" (Tan 181) into the thing that her mother saw, into something full of faults, something that is not good enough for her. Waverly resents this, yet Lindo believes that it is for Waverly's own good. She does not want Waverly to accept something just because it was a gift, like the fur jacket that Rich gave Waverly. Lindo believes that she has taught Waverly to grow up with values, with goals that everyone and everything must meet. As Waverly shows Lindo the jacket, Lindo inspects it, finally reporting, "This is not so good" (Tan 186). Waverly protests, "He gave me this from his heart" (Tan 186), to which Lindo replies, "That is why I worry" (Tan 186). Lindo simply wants Waverly to strive for the best. Lindo believes that her daughter deserves th...

... middle of paper ...

...ruin everything that she holds dear, while Lindo is just trying to make her see that she deserves better. I relate to the essence of that conflict. I too

look for flaws in people and situations, just as Lindo does for her daughter. Yet, I do it to sabotage my own happiness, as though I feel subconsciously as if I do not deserve to be happy. I would see flaws in people that I liked, or in my own work, thinking that I could do better each time with everything that came my way. I think that, because of this scrutiny that I put myself through, it has helped me to become a better student. I am able to see little details that require changing, that need to be improved. Also, I have recently come to realize that I deserve to be happy, that I am a good person, that I deserve what everyone else seems to have: pride in themselves and in others. I am gradually learning to accept others for what they are and have stopped looking for flaws in people. I now let them be what they are. I have accepted myself, and now am able to accept them. This book has helped me to see what qualities I have inside of myself and how pointless it really is to be so scrutinizing of myself and of others.

Show More
Related

  • Mother Daughter Relationships In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

    1083 Words  | 3 Pages

    No relationship is ever perfect no matter how great it seems. In the novel The Joy Luck Club, written by Amy Tan, she tells the story of a few mother daughter pairs that are in a group named the Joy Luck Club. The Joy Luck Club is a group of women who come together once a week to play mahjong. The founder of the Joy Luck Club, Suyuan Woo, dies, leaving her daughter Jing-mei to take her place in the club. Her daughter, Jing-mei, receives money from the other members of the club to travel to China in order to find her mother's twin daughters who were left many years ago. In this book you get more of the details of this family and a few more. Amy Tan uses the stories of Jing-mei and Suyuan, Waverly and Jindo, and An-mei and Rose to portray her theme of, mother daughter relationships can be hard at times but they are always worth it in the end.

    Read More

  • Irony And Symbolism In Amy Tan's A Joy Luck

    122 Words  | 1 Pages

    The fact that they’re 24 carrot gold indicates that she wants the best for herself and her new life. It also symbolizes her purity and strength as a person.

    Read More

  • Chinese Women In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

    1258 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Characterization in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club

    505 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Mothers and Daughters in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club

    1798 Words  | 4 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Movie Essay - The Film Based Upon of Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

    712 Words  | 2 Pages

    "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.

    Read More

  • Characterism In A Pair Of Tickets By Amy Tan

    2060 Words  | 5 Pages

    “The minute our train leaves the Hong Kong border and enters Shenzhen, China, I feel different. I can feel the skin on my forehead tingling, my blood rushing through a new course, my bones aching with a familiar old pain. And I think, my mother was right. I am becoming Chinese. (179). In the story A Pair of Tickets by Amy Tan, the protagonist character, Jing-mei, finds herself in several difficult situations due to how her social and cultural upbringing has shaped her. She finds herself pulled between her Chinese DNA and her American background. While she was raised being told that she was Chinese and “it’s in her blood”, she does not identify as such, because she grew up in America and only sees herself as an American. After her mother’s passing,

    Read More

  • Subjugation of Women Exposed in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

    959 Words  | 2 Pages

    Is it fair to judge someone by their sex? In traditional Chinese culture, many judgments were made about a person just by observing their sex. The women was looked upon as an inferior being. They had little or no status in society, and little was expected from them. They were discriminated against when they tried to stand up for themselves. Chinese culture was customarily male dominated. The male was expected to do most of the work, and the woman was expected to stay at home with their mouth shut. This custom leaves an unwelcome feeling in a woman's heart. They feel like nobody cares, and it makes it much harder to live with an optimistic view on life.

    Read More

  • The Heros Journey: A Hero's Journey

    1131 Words  | 3 Pages

    This eventually leads to Waverly’s downfall when she decides to quit playing chess. As an adult, Waverly doesn’t overcome her issues with her mother, “After our miserable lunch, I gave up the idea that there would ever be a good time to tell her the news that Rich Schields and I were getting married” (Tan 167). This quote displays Waverly’s inability to trust and connect with her mother as she grows older. While spending time with her mother at home, Waverly does succeed in recognizing her mother’s importance and true intentions, she states, “In the brief instant that I had peered over the barriers I could finally see what was really there: an old woman, a work of her armor, a knitting needle for her sword, getting a little crabby as she waited patiently for her daughter to invite her in” (Tan 184). The following quote signifies Waverly’s psychological transformation in her journey as she successfully recognizes her mother’s affection and stops confusing her actions with personal attacks.

    Read More

  • The Joy Luck Club Literary Analysis

    500 Words  | 1 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • An Abundance of Katherines

    1073 Words  | 3 Pages

    Throughout the novel the reader finds out that one cannot stew over a negative situation, but instead, find the positive in a negative situation and move on to better things. In addition, people should always be themselves because we all matter, no matter what our differences.

    Read More

  • Mothers and the Chinese Spirit in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club

    2111 Words  | 5 Pages

    The Joy Luck Club is the telling of a tale of struggle by four mothers and their four daughters trying to understand the issue of gender identity, how they each discover or lose their sense of self and what they mean to one another. Throughout the book each of the mothers works hard at teaching their daughters the virtues of Chinese wisdom while allowing the opportunities of American life. They try passing on a piece of themselves despite the great barriers that are built between the women. Each of the stories gives a wonderful glimpse into the Chinese culture and heritage that the mothers are trying to reveal to their daughters through the use of festivals, food dishes, marriage ceremonies, and the raising of children, essentially their past experiences.

    Read More

  • Sonny's Blues And Cathedral Analysis

    443 Words  | 1 Pages

    Almost all the stories we had read throughout the semester reflect the conflict within a character. Some of them are physically imprisoned as the woman in The Yellow Wallpaper, others are confined in their own prejudices and emotional lives like the narrator in Cathedral and in Sonny’s Blues or the

    Read More

  • Romanticism And Puritanism In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

    1788 Words  | 4 Pages

    Romanticism and Puritanism collide in Nathaniel Hawthorne 's The Scarlet Letter, as Hawthorne’s characters are dealt with a conflict between following one’s own moral code versus following the code of a pious and conservative society. Hawthorne introduces characters who are in a struggle to rebel against a stubborn society. Throughout his novel, Hawthorne allegorizes a Romantic moral that expressing one’s true beliefs and emotions is ultimately rewarding. Across their progression, the characters Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, and Roger Chillingworth embody such Romantic moral.

    Read More

  • Mother-Daughter Relationships in Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club

    1520 Words  | 4 Pages

    Mother-Daughter Relationships in Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club 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.

    Read More

More about Conflicts in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

Open Document