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The comparisons of the mother and daughters in the joy luck club
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Mother as Villain and Victim in Joy Luck Club
In The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan focuses on several mother-daughter relationships. One of the relationships explored is that between an immigrant Chinese mother and her American born daughter Jing-mei. The mother expects Jing-mei to be a prodigy child - while pursuing this dream she unintentionally creates a serious conflict between her and her daughter.
To fulfill her unrealistic expectations, the mother pushes Jing-mei to be the best in anything and everything. At first, the reader may perceive the mother as the villain in the story; however, the mother just wants her daughter to have the life that she never had. Jing-mei does not understand her intentions.
Jing-mei's mother thought opportunity was everywhere in America, "America was where all my mother's hopes lay" (Tan 1208). The mother lost everything when she moved from China to San Francisco in 1949. In China she lost her family, her spouse, and she had to abandon her twin baby girls (Tan 1208). This implies that her mother had a difficult life and wanted to start a new life in America.
Unfamiliar with the customs of America, she had been brought up in a strict Chinese culture. Her mother probably raised her the same way, and therefore, that is where she learned her parenting skills. The Chinese life is strict, more so than the American life, and that was the only way the mother knew how to raise her daughter. The mother seemed to be the villain in the story, but she was only trying to be the caring parent the best way she knew how. She only wanted her daughter to be the best, but a conflict started when the daughter failed to meet her expectations.
In the beginning Jing-mei, th...
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...he wanted to see her daughter become something better than what she had become. Instead of encouraging her daughter to become someone who she wanted to be, she ends up pushing her in the wrong direction. I think that Jing-mei finally realized why her mother did what she did. I agree with Ghymn when she states that "Jing-mei does care deeply what her mother thinks of her" (84). It is obvious that even though they were two kinds from two different cultures they still found forgiveness in the end.
Work Cited
Souris, Stephen. "'Only Two Kinds of Daughters:'" Inter-Monologue Dialogicity in The Joy Luck Club." Melus 19.2 (Summer 1994):99-123.
Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. Vintage Contemporaries. New York: A Division of Random House, Inc. 1993.
Willard, Nancy. Asian American Women Writers. Ed. Harold Bloom. Chelsea House Publishers, Philadelphia 1997.
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.
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.
Since "You could be anything you wanted to be in America" (Tan 348) Jing-Meis' mother thought that meant that you had to be a prodigy. While that makes "Everything [sound] too simple and too easily achieved; [Jing-Mei] does not paint a picture of her mother as ignorant or silly" (Brent). In fact, in the beginning, Jing-Mei and her mother are both trying to "Pick the right kind of prodigy" (Tan 349). "In the beginning, [she] was just as excited as [her] mother,"(Tan 349) she wanted to be a prodigy, she wanted to "become perfect [she wanted her] mother and father to adore [her]"(Tan 349). As she strived to achieve perfection she and her mother would try many different things to try and find the "right kind of prodigy" (Tan 349).
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.
Shear, Walter. Generational Differences and the Diaspora in The Joy Luck Club. An excerpt from Critique, Vol. 34, No. 3 (Spring 1993). 1993. Helen Dwight Reid Educational Foundation.
Jing-mei and her mother have conflicting values of how Jing-mei should live her life. She tries to see what becoming a prodigy would be like from her mother's point of view and the perks that it would bring her as she states in the story "In all my imaginings, I was filled with a sense that I would soon become perfect. My mother and f...
The second classic criticism of Utilitarian Principle is that Mill’s dichotomy of higher and lower pleasures create the need to calculate the happiness derived from each category of pleasures. This has left critics asking “Is a dissatisfied Socrates better off than a satisfied fool?” In response, Mill says that people learn to distinguish physical (or lower) pleasures from mental (or higher) pleasures with training. We possess the tendency to favor the higher pleasures, as we are human beings rather than mere
In the debate with the critics of utilitarianism Mill clarifies the principle of utility, which implies general happiness. General happiness requires no...
In John Stuart Mill’s “Utilitarianism”, Mill generates his thoughts on what Utilitarianism is in chapter 2 of his work. Mill first starts off this chapter by saying that many people misunderstand utilitarianism by interpreting utility as in opposition to pleasure. When in reality, utility is defined
Mill understands the Utilitarian principle to the full of it 's extent, he also understands why a person would disregard the theory, and there goes on to unravel the seemingly missing puzzle pieces to connect the theory completely, and correctly. His argurment reflects that of his own thoughts and opinions on the philosophy of the overall good of the population, concerning what is considered good by the measurement of happiness and pleasure. This in turn is where the second term for Utilitarianims comes from, as it is call the Greatest Happiness Principle. In his text, Mr. Mill states that this principle "holds that actiosn are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness" (96). Following this idea, he explains that happiness holds the absence of pain and the reverse of that, there holds the "privation of pleasure" (Mill 96). John Mill says that this is exactly what happiness and pleasure consist of. What is considered controversial on this particular theory is the simplicty of the definind words. The greatest happiness principle concerns happiness and pleasure, to the simple or closed minded this sounds degrading to humans or anyone who believes in it. John Mill argues for this principle and against the simple minded people that would judge the Epicureans for practicing
...ith Jing Mei and her mother, it is compounded by the fact that there are dual nationalities involved as well. Not only did the mother’s good intentions bring about failure and disappointment from Jing Mei, but rooted in her mother’s culture was the belief that children are to be obedient and give respect to their elders. "Only two kinds of daughters.....those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind!" (Tan1) is the comment made by her mother when Jing Mei refuses to continue with piano lessons. In the end, this story shows that not only is the mother-daughter relationship intricately complex but is made even more so with cultural and generational differences added to the mix.
Philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Buber both emphasize how the presence of others in our lives and the bonds which we create with them define who we are and affects our self-perception. Both have their own theory of how this occurs. I will begin by discussing Sartre’s perspective on the subject, and Buber’s stance will follow.
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.
The value of different pleasures is also a point of interest for Mill. Mill’s version of utilitarianism requires a comparison between different types of pleasures. Mill says that pleasure can be measured by both quality and quantity. A pleasure could be consi...
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