The Joy Luck Club: Divorce

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.

 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 story “The Rules of the Game” shows how Waverly’s ability to play Chess well increases her mother’s expectations throughout the story. In the beginning Waverly wanted to play chess so much so that she was begging her brothers to let her play. Waverly says “ Let me! Let me!’ I begged

In Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, Waverly Jong is a dynamic character who shows her arrogance, selfishness and insecurities as the story progresses. On the first letter of Waverly’s name, W, sits a Mink, which symbolizes her desire for her mother’s approval. Throughout the novel, Waverly avoids Lindo’s criticism and fears her mother will not agree with her choices. This is evident in “Four Directions” when Waverly shows her mother the mink coat Rich bought her and Lindo responds, “This is no good… It is just leftover strips. And the fur is too short” (Tan 186). Waverly is destroyed by her mother’s criticism. After Lindo points out the coat’s flaws, Waverly can no longer see the good in it; she only values the things her mother values. Next, the “a” is formed by a crab, symbolizing selfishness. During New Year’s dinner at the Woo house, Waverly takes the best three crabs for her family. She does not care that she is a guest or that Suyuan had not planned on Shoshana eating crabs, she takes the best for herself, showing her self-centered nature. After the “a,” the “v” is formed by two dolls, symbolizing her childhood and her love for her daughter. Contrasting her negative traits, Waverly’s unfaltering love for Shoshana shows that she is willing to sacrifice her successes for her daughter’s prosperity, demonstrating that she is not as selfish as she is portrayed. A red candle is embedded in the “e” to highlight Waverly’s ignorance. She believes she is all knowing but does not

Over time, she learns just how to manipulate her to get what she wants. One example of this is seen when Waverly wants to attend at chess tournament that her mother would never agree to. “I desperately wanted to go, but i bit back my tongue. I knew she would not let me play among strangers.” (Tan 9) By initiating what would appear to others as small talk, she redirects her mother's strong will. “As we walked home I said in a small voice that I didn't want to play in the local tournament. They would have American rules. If I lost, I would bring shame on my family.” (Tan 9) This shows she is not afraid of deceiving her mother when the outcome is worth the

Waverly was going to tell Lindo of her and Rich’s engagement, but whenever she mentioned him, Lindo cut her off and began to talk about something else. Waverly was convinced that her mother did not have any good intentions, and that she never saw good in people. Due to this, she was afraid of what her mother will say when she would meet Rich. According to Waverly, she and Rich shared a “pure love”, which she was afraid her mother would poison. Waverly planned to go to Auntie Suyuan’s house with Rich for dinner, knowing that her mother would then invite the two over for dinner to her house, and this would give her mother a chance to get to know and warm up to Rich. However, when they went for dinner, Rich did everything incorrectly- he didn’t understand Chinese customs and made several mistakes that were seen as

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.

First of all, the Joy Luck Club had so many conflicts and misunderstandings between almost all of the characters. Most of the conflicts were between Waverly and her mom. Some conflicts were just differences between Waverly and her mother because of the generation gap between the two. Her mom didn’t like the things she would do and she could never see herself doing things that Waverly was doing back when she was a child. There were also cultural and martial conflicts throughout the book also.

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

The Joy Luck Club continues with Lindo and Waverly Jong. As a child, Lindo had a pre-arranged marriage, which turned out poorly. She wants her daughter to be able to have a happy marriage with a husband she chooses herself. Throughout Lindo's unhappy marriage, she often wondered why she should have "an unhappy life so someone else could have a happy one"(53). Lindo's thoughts reveal that she wished to live her own life and have the ability to make her own decisions. This desire gave Lindo the extra confidence to figure out a way to escape the marriage, in which she did successfully. When Waverly shows her mother the sweater that Rich bought her, she tells her mother that it was from his heart which is "why [Lindo] worries" (186). Lindo's uncertainties reveal that she only wants the best for her daughter, but Waverly thinks that her mother only has something against Rich. Once Waverly talks to her mother, she realizes that her mother does not have any "secret meaning," but does not want her

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

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

Waverly’s mother is creating rules for her daughter to become a better chess player. First, Waverly’s mother becomes possessive of her daughter’s chess tournament achievements. When Waverly wins her chess tournament, she says, ‘Ma, it’s not how many pieces you lose’, I said . ‘Sometimes you need to lose pieces to get ahead.’...but it was my mother who wore the triumphant grin” (Tan 4). Waverly disagrees with her mother’s thought as she believes that to win something, you have to lose something. This is significant to the title as Waverly’s mother is creating a rule for her daughter to follow so she can win every tournament she participates in. Second, Waverly’s mother wants to watch her daughter practice chess. While Waverly is practicing, she says, “ ‘Ma, I can’t practice when you stand there like that’, I said one day. She retreated to the kitchen and made

In the United States, an all-too-frequent occurrence unfortunately is divorce. I feel that this is a sad thing. Billy Collins tackles this delicate issue masterfully in his poem “Divorce,” an eighteen-word, four-line poem that catches the tone of many splits while using simple things like utensils and tables to make examples of a couple’s situation, using metaphors, imagery, nostalgia, and irony.

    The commonly known phrase “like mother, like daughter” holds very true with all the pairs of mothers and daughters in The Joy Luck Club.  Rose posses important characteristics that were passed on by her mother, An-mei.  Uniquely with this couple, the trait can also be traced back to An-mei’s mother.  All three of these women have difficulty