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Similar Roles of Mothers and Daughters in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club The Joy Luck Club, a novel by Amy Tan, is structured in an unusual way. It is divided into four different sections. Each section has four stories told by four different women. In the first section all the mothers, in the Joy Luck Club, talk about their childhood. In the next two sections the daughters talk about their childhood and their experiences through life. In the last section the four mothers speak about the stories of when they were younger, around their daughters' age. This novel explores countless topics. Not only does it deal with gender identity and the relationships between Chinese-American cultures, but it also deals with mother daughter relationships. Amy Tan shows us how mothers and daughters mirror each other. Every daughter in this novel hears about their mother's life and sees some comparisons to her own life. "All women are daughters and must resolve the conflicts inherent in the mother/daughter relationship if they are to understand themselves an ultimately to establish their own identity". (Internet 1) No matter how old they get, mothers and daughters play similar roles. Even though an individual may not consciously do things that their mothers have taught/ inherit from them, they still act the same in some respects. An example of this would be GuYing-ying (Betty) St. Clair and Lena St. Clair. Both of these characters tell their stories. These stories, in ways, sound very similar to each other. Ying-ying's story is called the Moon Lady. In this story, Ying-ying learns a truth and in some ways becomes a different person. As Ying-ying sat on the edge of the boat the firecrackers went off. She fell off the boat and found herself lost in a large body of water. She is discovered in the water and is brought to shore where she finds her family. Later she sees the moon lady and wants to make a wish. The moon lady is similar to a shooting star. You only get one wish and it only appears once in a great while. However, when she sees the moon lady she discovers something. "I could see the face of the moon lady: shrunken cheeks, a broad oily nose, large glaring teeth, and red stained eyes. A face so tires that she she wearily pulled off her hair, her long gown fell from her shoulders and as the secret wish fell from my lips, the moon lady looked at me and became a man" (83) Ying-ying discovers that things aren't always what they appear to be.
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.
Throughout Asian American literature there is a struggle between Asian women and their Asian American daughters. This is the case in The Joy Luck Club, written by Amy Tan and also in the short story "Waiting for Mr. Kim," written by Carol Roh-Spaulding. These two stories are very different, however they are similar in that they portray Asian women trying to get their American daughters to respect their Asian heritage. There are certain behaviors that Asian women are expected to have, and the mothers feel that their daughters should use these behaviors.
In conclusion, this essay analyzes the similarities and differences of the two stories written by Herman Melville, Billy Budd and Bartleby. The settings, characters, and endings in the two stories reveal very interesting comparisons and contrasts. The comparison and contrast also includes the interpretation of the symbolism that Melville used in his two stories. The characters, Billy and Bartleby, could even be considered autobiographical representatives of Herman Melville.
Mother-daughter relationships are unique and can involve a complex and intense range of emotions. Chinese-American authors Amy Chua and Amy Tan explore the nature of mother-daughter relationships from an Asian perspective. In an excerpt from her memoir Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom, Amy Chua recounts her struggles and frustrations with her daughter, Lulu and violin lessons. On the other hand, Amy Tan’s novel, The Joy Luck Club, paints a vivid picture of Tan’s exasperation with her mother over piano practice. She describes an intense exchange in which she resorts to shouting the most hurtful words she can at her mother. Both excerpts have a different tone and diction that describe their unique mother-daughter relationships.
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.
Amy Tan’s novel, The Joy Luck Club describes the lives of first and second generation Chinese families, particularly mothers and daughters. Surprisingly The Joy Luck Club and, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts are very similar. They both talk of mothers and daughters in these books and try to find themselves culturally. Among the barriers that must be overcome are those of language, beliefs and customs.
In conclusion, it was evident that this great work of literature provides many allusions that provide reference to more familiar work and help us understand a clearer understanding to the meaning of the work. Even though the allusions do not all pertain to the entire meaning of the work, but they do illuminate a broader perspective of the characters, setting, and tone. Yet, there were a lot of allusions that did illuminate the entire meaning of the novella, and even though the true meaning remains ambiguous they still reflected what most readers consider the meaning. The meaning of Herman Melville’s well known masterpiece is that one who had suffered was not really the one suffering, but the one who caused the suffer is really the one who is suffering.
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.
Before exploring Ishmael, Ahab, and Moby Dick and their Biblical counterparts, it is important to understand Melville's background. He grew up as a baptized Calvinist in the Dutch Reformed Church. His parents trained him to obey God at all times, even if God’s commands seem unjust and cruel. However, he quickly turned against his faith after his father died. During his travels, he witnessed diseases, catastrophes, and hatred throughou...
"I have already experienced the worst. After this, there is no worst possible thing" (Amy Tan 121). Throughout The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan tells stories of how mothers use the misfortunes in their lives, to try to teach their daughters about life. Many of the mothers had bad experiences in their pasts and do not want to see their daughters live through the same types of problems. They try to make their daughters' lives as easy and problem free as possible. However, the daughters do not see this as an act of love, but rather as an act of control. In the end, the daughters realize that their mothers tried to use their experiences to teach them not to give up hope, and to look at the good of an experience rather than the bad.
The body of this argument lies in a meager psychoanalysis of Melville. I have had to take a very broad approach, look at Melville purely as a man. I have attempted to put the reader into Melville's head, where I have attempted to put myself. To better achieve this I discuss much of Melville's background, hoping to give the reader a sense of what he had experienced. I have written with confidence, but hopefully not too much, you must decide for yourselves what of mine you feel is right. It is always very hard to use psychoanalytical approaches, because, as the mind is a mystery, it is all ultimately unproved. All psychoanalytical opinion is based on event, as all psychology is based on the idea that men are shaped by experience. I speculate below, on things I cannot really know, and I do this only to achieve some rough personal connections between Melville and his Moby-Dick. It serves me, and I hope you as well.
Moby-Dick is the one American story which every individual seems to recognize. Because of its pervasiveness into our country’s collective psyche, the tale has been reproduced in film and cartoon, and references to the characters and the whale can be found in commercials, sitcoms, and music, proving the novel to still be relevant today. It is the epitome of American Romanticism because it delves into the human spirit, the force of imagination, and power of the emotions and the intellect. The novel praises and critiques the American society in sharp and unequivocal terms, while, at the same time, mirroring this mixed society through the “multinational crew of...the Pequod” (Shaw 61). Melville, through his elaborate construction of the novel, “makes the American landscape a place for epic conquest” (Lyons 462). The primary draw of this novel is the story itself: a whaling ship, headed by a monomaniac, and the pursuit of a whale, or the American dream and its attainment, making a clear “connection between Romanticism and nationalism” (Evans 9). The novel calls upon the reader’s imagination, emotions, and intellect to fully understand the journey of the story, the journey which takes the reader on a most unusual trip into the soul of mankind.
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.
Abstract: There are many Analyst who would agree that the novel Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, the whale is just half of what the novel is really talking about. They would also agree that Melville employs some sort of spiritual read by simply by providing scriptures and rephrasing verses from the Bible into the text. But what is it really about? What made Melville come up with this idea style of writing Moby-Dick? Other analyst who also asked themselves this questions, probably looked deeper into the novel doing tons of research figured out a possible solution. The solution that Melville was influenced by Shakespeare novel ‘Hamlet’ this has been established because of the allusions Melville makes to Hamlet are countless. Moby-Dick may be a contemporary version of Hamlet. This paper will illustrate how the characters of Moby-Dick counterparts with the characters in Hamlet, expanding the reason why the character in one works with the other.