The Joy Luck Club Theme Analysis The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan is an entertaining book that focuses on four Chinese American immigrant families. They face problems in their hometown which causes them to move to the United States. They end up moving to San Francisco and face many different problems with their cultural background. The theme of The Joy Luck Club is the relationship between both the mothers and their daughters. A variety of different events occur throughout the book that explains the complex relationship between the mothers and their daughters. They always have a special bond between them even though their different cultural and generational conflicts occur constantly. The mother and daughter relationship is shown …show more content…
“She never thinks anybody is good enough for anything” (Tan 183). She explains how her mother criticizes everything. There are many events that happen within the book that show the negative side of the relationship. On the contrary, there are many events within the book that show the positive side of the relationships between the mothers and their daughters. There are many events within the book that represent the complex relationships between the mothers and their daughters. An example from the book that shows the positive side of their relationship would be in the American Translation section of the book. “She grabbed my hand and put the necklace in my palm, then shut my fingers around it” (Tan 235). Suyuan Woo gave a necklace to her daughter June. Suyuan said that she wore it and when June would wear it, she would know her mother's meaning. “This is your life’s importance” (Tan 235). Another example from the book would also be The American Translation. “I am not telling you to save your marriage, I only say you should speak up” (Tan 216). In this part of the book, An-Mei Hsu told her daughter, Rose Hsu Jordon, to speak up for herself because her husband was trying to get a divorce. Her mother was able to see what was going on and encouraged her to speak up. There are many different examples of The Joy Luck Club that show the positive side of the relationship between
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 Joy Luck Club is Amy Tan's first novel. It consists of four sections with sixteen short stories. One of the main issues of the novel is the relationship between Chinese mothers and their Chinese – American daughters. ‘‘Your mother is in your bones.’’ (Tan 1998, 30) There is a cultural chasm between them because of the difference in the way they were brought up and different influences of the environment.
Amy Tan, who wants to understand and figure out her own affiliation between her another mother, wrote The Joy Luck Club. This book explains and uses words to show the differences between the daughters and their mothers by putting in the Chinese culture and the western culture in the article. The Joy Luck Club has four different sections. And they all have common backgrounds but have different meanings behind them.
Furthermore, Amy Tan writes a wonderful short story about the complicated relationship between mothers and daughters, yet one can be enriching. The theme of “Two
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
There is a common theme of hope throughout the stories of The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan. Even in the face of immeasurable danger and strife, the mothers and daughters in the book find themselves faithful in the future by looking to the past, which is only helped by the format of Tan’s writing. This is shown specifically in the stories of Suyuan and Jing-Mei Woo, Lena and Ying-Ying St. Clair, and Lindo and Waverly Jong. The vignette structure of The Joy Luck Club allows the stories to build on one another in a way that effortlessly displays both the happy and dark times in each mother’s life, which lets their experiences act as sources of background and guidance to their daughters in times when they need it most.
Traditions, heritage and culture are three of the most important aspects of Chinese culture. Passed down from mother to daughter, these traditions are expected to carry on for years to come. In Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, daughters Waverly, Lena, Rose and June thoughts about their culture are congested by Americanization while on their quests towards self-actualization. Each daughter struggles to find balance between Chinese heritage and American values through marriage and professional careers.
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
The book The Joy Luck Club is a novel written by Amy Tan, who is very famous in writing about mother-daughter relationships. There are four pairs of mothers and daughters whose stories are told in The Joy Luck Club. All of the mothers were born in China and came to America because of some kind of problem, but their daughters were born in the United States. Due to the fact that the daughters were born in the United States, they are extremely Americanized. Consequently, they do not value the Chinese heritage which their mothers valued dearly. As the daughters are growing up, this conflict between them increases. Suyuan Woo and her daughter, June or Jing-mei, two characters from the book, had major conflicts over the Chinese belief system of
The complexitities of any mother-daughter relationship go much deeper then just their physical features that resemble one another. In Amy Tan’s novel The Joy Luck Club, the stories of eight Chinese women are told. Together this group of women forms four sets of mother and daughter pairs. The trials and triumphs, similarities and differences, of each relationship with their daughter are described, exposing the inner makings of four perfectly matched pairs. Three generations of the Hsu family illustrate how both characteristics and
In the novel The Joy Luck Club written by Amy Tan, there are several stories that intertwine into one novel. Each of the stories takes place China where the roles and the actions of woman are vastly different compared to American tradition. In the different stories, they all are about different mothers and daughters. Throughout the book, the reader can see the development in each relationship between mother and daughter with their conflicting backgrounds from China to America.
The bond mothers and daughters share is unique, it’s connection that can only exist between mother and daughter. The article talks about how a mother and daughter don’t always get along the older the daughter gets, and the more independent the daughter becomes. This can relate to the story of the Chinese mothers and their daughters in The Joy Luck Club.
¨The Joy Luck Club¨ by Amy Tan was an interesting novel. The book consisted of about eight characters, meaning eight different perspectives. Each of which, had a whole chapter or two dedicated to a short story in there life. They tell each other these life stories at a gathering they have every once in awhile to play mah jong. Throughout each story, or chapter, the mothers try to connect more with their daughters, and the daughters try to connect more with their mothers. It makes you wonder how well daughters know their mothers.
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.
Throughout The Joy Luck Club Amy Tan inserts various conflicts betweens mothers and daughters. Most of these relationships, already very fragile, become distanced through heritage, history and expectations. These differences cause reoccurring clashes between two specific mother-daughter bonds. The first relationship exists between Waverly Jong and her mother, Lindo. Lindo tries to instill Chinese qualities in her daughter while Waverly refuses to recognize her heritage and concentrates on American culture. The second bond is that of Jing-Mei Woo and her mother, Suyuan. In the beginning of the book Jing-Mei speaks of confusion in her recently deceased mother's actions. The language and cultural barrier presented between Jing-Mei and Suyuan