The Joy Luck Club Lena Character Analysis

In the novel The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan communicates that women need to develop an identity to survive rough times through Lena and Ying-Ying lack of spirit and inability to fight destiny. As shown through Lena and Ying-ying women need to evolve to endure through their stages of life. Both went through the motions of life without any of their spirit. Even though it was possible for them to change things they let opportunities to pass through them causing an inability to change things in their life as they grew older.

Amy Tan shows how Lena and Ying-ying lacks spirit as both don’t speak for themselves making it harder for them fight against hard times. Ying-Ying growing up is a strong and cunning girl but after getting into a loveless marriage she

slowly beginned to lose her spirit. After her husband leaves her for another women, Ying-Ying goes back to her family and stays there for ten years waiting in between the tree’s. She moves to the city working as a shop girl where she meet her future husband, Clifford St. Clair who she neither love or hate. She receives word that her first husband is dead and decides to marry St. Clair. When she decided to say yes she described how she let go of her spirit which caused her sadness: “Now I was a tiger that neither pounced nor lay waiting between the trees. I become an unseen spirit” (251). Ying-ying allowed herself to be married even though she really don’t have a care for St. Clair well Lena allowed herself to keep on splitting things between her husband. Lena and her husband, Harold, had kept a very fair relationship by splitting the bill in everything. Ying-ying ask why Lena was allowing herself to be in this kind of relationship and Lena thinks about how in the past when people had question why they split things consistently say it's about being equals but instead she says, “I don’t really know. It’s something we started before we got married. And for some reason we never stopped” (162). Lena shows how her lack of spirit made her unable to speak up about her state of relationship. Tan shows how in this conversation with her mother, Lena acknowledge how she was unable speak out before it was too late. Not only does Lena and Ying-ying lack spirit but they lack the ability to fight against their destiny.
Amy Tan illustrates Lena and Ying-ying inability to fight against destiny through how both are unable to survive through their hardships.

Lena is showing her mother her house she is nervous of how her mom would see the house as her mother had a certain ability to read into the situation. After showing her mother where she would be sleeping her mother ask about the crooked table that Lena’s husband made and tries to explain why having a crooked table is not good, “You put something else on top everything, fall down. Chunwang Chihan” (163). Chunwang Chihan means how one thing is always the result of something. Tan was describing how the result of Lena’s lack of spirit that she is unable to fight against destiny. Ying-ying fighting spirit was long lost after she allowed herself to be married just because she saw a sign that she would married the man. She described how she lost herself and wasn’t able to reclaim her spirit to give her strength to live her life: “I let myself become a wounded animal” (251). Tan showed how Ying-ying allowed herself to lose her strength after getting in a loveless marriage because of her failure to act against her destiny or really the sign she saw that made her think she would get

marry.