Joy Luck Club Analysis

The Joy Luck Club is the first novel by Amy Tan, published in 1989. The Joy Luck Club is about a group of Chinese women that share family stories while they play Mahjong. When the founder of the club, Suyuan Woo, died, her daughter June replaced her place in the meetings. In her first meeting, she finds out that her lost twin sisters were alive in China. Before the death of Suyuan, the other members of the club located the address of June’s half-sisters. After that, they send June to tell her half-sisters about her mother’s life. In our lives there are events, and situations that mark our existence and somehow determine our life. In this novel, it shows how four mothers and their daughters were impacted by their tradition and beliefs. In the traditional Asian family, parents define the law and the children are expected to follow their requests and demands; respect for one’s parents and elders is critically important. Traditions are very important because they allow us to remember the beliefs that marked a whole culture.

Many women find that their mothers have the greatest influence on their lives and the way their strengths and weaknesses come together. In Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, the lives of four Chinese mothers and their Chinese-American daughters are followed through vignettes about their upbringings and interactions. One of the mothers, An-Mei Hsu, grows up away from her mother who has become the 4th wife of a rich man; An-Mei is forced to live with her grandmother once her mother is banned from the house, but eventually reunites and goes to live in the man’s house with her mother. Her daughter, Rose, has married an American man, Ted, but their marriage begins to end as he files for divorce; Rose becomes depressed and unsure what to do, despite

The mother-daughter relationships represented in Amy Tan’s novel The Joy Luck Club are influenced by many existing factors. Lena St. Clair, Ying-Ying St. Clair’s daughter, is a Chinese-American adult who lives with her forceful husband, Harold. Ying-Ying is a Chinese mother who travelled to America to live a better life after experiencing many hardships in China. Throughout the novel, the relationship between Lena and Ying-Ying is represented as weak and distant. These characters are prevented from having a healthy relationship because they do not support each other, they possess similar characteristics, and they are strong.

Ying-Ying became passive and lifeless after her second son died. She kept the fact that she felt responsible for her second sons death a secret from her husband and daughter, Lena. As shown in this example, Ying-Ying had Chinese cultural values in an American society. This produces the conflict between cultures. Ying-Ying becomes so passive that she lets her husband make all of her decisions for her.

An-mei and Rose have similar character development in that Rose’s character development aided her relationship with An-mei. In “Scar” and “Magpies,” An-mei reveals how she was taught to desire nothing and swallow her tears. Because of her experience with a deceptive, multi-wife household and her mother’s suicide, An-mei taught Rose the opposite of this Chinese way. However, An-mei realizes that Rose came out the same way regardless of her teachings (page 215). An-mei tells Rose that Rose was born without wood and would bend to listen to other people if she was not careful (page 191). Rose grows up believing everything her mother says and is prone to nightmares led by Mr. Chou. In Rose’s failed marriage, she does not make any decisions and just lets things happen. Rose finally takes a look at

In Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, there are multitudes of social occasions on which a character can be changed as a result. One of these social occasions is when An-Mei’s mother commits suicide and dies in front of the household. As a result of her mother’s death, An-Mei realizes that she needs not suppress her sorrows and remain reticent as her culture defines it, but should develop and assert her own convictions. This event reinforces the message that tradition is vital for people to connect with each other, it is just as necessary for individuals to develop free thought. Tradition is vital for the initial growth of objectives and beliefs, but having tradition as a sole perspective will only come to eliminate autonomy and limit the maturity of ideas.

The relationship a mother has with her daughter is one of the most significant relationships either person will possess. In Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, the stories of four mothers and their respective daughters are established through vignettes, which reveal the relationships between them. Throughout the novel, the mothers and daughters are revealed to be similar, yet different. Lindo and Waverly Jong can be compared and contrasted through their upbringings, marriages, and personalities.

The Joy Luck Club is a novel by Amy Tan which tells the individual, cohesive stories of Chinese American daughters and their Chinese mothers. In each story, the cultural differences between mother and daughter acts as a wedge between them. The conflicting cultures of descent and consent causes a conflict between mother and daughter; although they ultimately want to have a relationship with each other, the differences in values make coming together harder. For the mothers, their expectations for their daughters are high, while the daughters are trying to understand how China fits into their American lives. This conflict between values perpetuates until there is an acceptance of each way of life.

Comparison Paper Mothers impact their kids personal lives. They can play both significant roles or minor ones. Our mom’s influence our decisions by their opinions. Whether we know it or not, our moms play a significant role in the way we feel about ourselves. This theme is continually shown throughout many different works.

Timeless was the best way to describe the traditions past down through Chinese culture: these traditions are based off the morals of devotion and sacrifice. The Chinese culture values the many aspects of a person's character toward his or her family. The Chinese believe that a person must respect his or her elders and parents to the highest degree, a term called filial piety. In The Joy Luck Club, the readers sees an example of filial piety when Lindo Jong portrays self sacrifice when she has to manage with her new family and mother-in-law. Throughout the novel, Amy Tan exposes the issues in Chinese Culture when faced with modernization and integration of cultures. The issue is between the mothers and their daughters when the daughters do not agree about the same value of filial piety because they have become Americanized and see the unequal treatment of their

    Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club is a novel that deals with many controversial issues. These issues unfold in her stories about four Chinese mothers and their American raised daughters. The novel begins with the mothers talking about their own childhood’s and the relationship that they had with their mothers. Then it focuses on the daughters and how they were raised, then to the daughters current lives, and finally back to the mothers who finish their stories. Tan uses these mother-daughter relationships to describe conflicts of history, culture, and identity and how each of these themes are intertwined with one another through the mothers and

A key part of the Chinese culture is bringing honor to oneself and one’s family. A part of being honorable is having a sense of independence, this is why Tan’s mother refused to take antidepressants. Tan said, “…what a different childhood I might have had had my mother taken antidepressants” (Dunick 3). Tan’s mother refused to take medication, because it would bring shame to herself and her family. She would be admitting defeat to depression and illness and this would be unacceptable to the Chinese culture. Tan’s mother decided to practice “invisible strength.” This shows how Tan’s mother was strong-willed and believed that she did not need help, because it would bring shame. Tan incorporated the same personality traits of her own mother into Waverly’s mother, who strived to be a strong and independent person. An example of this is when Waverly’s mother told Vincent to dispose of the chess set. She said, “‘She not want it. We not want it.’ she said, tossing her head stiffly to the side with a tight, proud smile” (Tan 3). Her mother could not accept charity, because it would show weakness and dependence and bring

In her novel The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan tells of the lives of four Chinese immigrant mothers, their hopes, their dreams and the way each of their daughters feel about their mother's lives.  Mother-daughter relationships are the basis for the entire story.  Tan shows the hardships each mother experiences as a child and young adult, and how they all want better lives for their daughters.  She shows the struggles between the mothers and the daughters;  these struggles result from many different things, from the cultural gap, to dreams and goals that may have been set too high.  Each daughter knows her mother means well, but this does not make the battles any

The setting which shifts from China during the e1st half of the 20th century and America during the latter half functions as medium to bring about the trials of each Character. Each mother had to tolerate the Chinese culture, the Abuses the setting of pre and post war conservative China established a trend of abuse dictated by a Society that looks down on women. As a rule of thumb Chinese women of this era were reduced to submission. Often these women were brought up thinking that they must serve their husbands, as seen through arranged marriages, wife battery. Chinese superstition also played a major role in the development of the elder protagonists, since the belief in ancestors, curses and bad omens often influenced the lives of the mothers. An example of this is the instance when < Waverly's mother > had to escape a cruel arranged marriage, she duped her in-laws into believing that their ancestors actually

protect them from the bombs of the Japanese. The Joy Luck Club was actually, as M. Marie Booth Foster expresses it, a means of taking ''their minds off the terrible smells of too many people in the city and the screams of humans and animals in pain. They attempted to raise their spirits with mah jong, jokes, and food'' (98). In the San Francisco Joy luck Club, the four Chinese immigrant mothers used to meet weekly. Narrating her mother's story, Jing- me Woo states, '' 'Each week we could forget past wrongs done to us. [...]. We feasted, we Laughed, we played games, lost and won, we told the best stories. And each week, we could hope to be lucky. That hope was our joy. And that's how we came to call our little parties Joy Luck' '' (Tan Joy 25). The four mothers used to play mah jong, a popular game in China. Subsequently, the Joy Luck Club was a means of preserving their Chinese cultural heritage while existing in an alien country. Additionally, it became, as Magali Cornier Michael points out, ''an emblem of the mother's fierce will to survive physically and psychically in a land foreign to them, of their recognition that their individual survival and control over their destinies in America requires communal support, and of their need to retain a sense of hope for the future'' (140). Moreover, the great value of the Joy Luck Club resided in the fact that as a ''familial entity'', it is of particular interest, in that it ''retains the habitual Chinese emphasis on the family