Jing-mei (June) Woo - Jing-mei Woo is the newest member of the Joy Luck Club, having taken her mother Suyuan’s place after her death. The other members of the Joy Luck Club give her money to travel to China so that she can find her mother’s long-lost twin daughters, Chwun Yu and Chwun Hwa, and tell them Suyuan’s story, but Jing-mei fears that she is not up to the task. 2. Suyuan Woo- Suyuan Woo was Jing-mei’s mother and the founder of the Joy Luck Club, a group of women who come together once weekly to play mahjong. She started the club in China, in the early days of her first marriage.
Two characters that could be portrayed as victims of society are Curley’s wife from ‘’Of Mice and Men’’ and Eva Smith from ‘’An Inspector Calls’’. Both characters are really similar to each other; they are young and both wanting a better life. Eva Smith lost both parents and lost her last two jobs because her boss thrown her just because she argued for a bigger pay for the workers who puts in so much effort. Gerald helped her with everything but Gerald chose Sheila instead, because she was richer. Eva had no choice as she was pregnant and she couldn’t get a job so she killed herself in a dramatic way.
To Jing-mei’s surprise, her mother still tried to force her to practice even after what had happened, so in her anger she told her mother she wished she was dead, just like the twin babies her mother had lost in China. Throughout the years that followed, Jing-mei continued to purposefully fall short of her potential, and to show her forgiveness her mother gave her the old piano she played as a child. In the end, after Jing-mei’s mother passed away, she sat and played the piano, finally appreciating her. The major conflict in “Two Kinds” is man vs man, with the narrator Jing-mei constantly at odds with her hopeful and determined mother. Jing-mei was raised in America, a very different atmosphere than her Mother, who lived in China for most of her life.
Setting of Amy Tan’s “A Pair of Tickets” Amy Tan’s “A Pair of Tickets” tells the story of a young girl “Jing-mei” whom has just lost her mother and is visiting her traditional Chinese family that she has never met. The setting of the story is Guangzhou China, where both Jing’s parents are originally from. This setting unintentionally causes Jing-Mei to learn more about her recently deceased mother’s past life and while doing so Jing-mei unintentionally finds the true Chinese heritage that she has always had within herself. In this short story, the setting of China has a tremendous impact on what is occurring internally to Jing-Mei; the narrator. Growing up in the United States Jing-Mei was extremely comfortable with American culture.
One of the key examples of external conflict in this story occurs when Jing-mei's mother scheduled piano lessons for Jing-mei without her consent. Jing-mei's mother decides she wants Jing-mei to try her hand at being a pianist so that she can be famed like the little Chinese girl on the Ed Sullivan Show. Jing-mei was upset when she heard this, she said, "When my mother told me this, I felt as though I had been sent to hell. "(Tan, 48) Jing-mei's reference to "hell" shows the antipathy against her mother's decision. Jing-mei wanted to be her own person so she was determined not to try hard at the piano lessons.
After the death of her mother, Jing-mei begins to feel different pangs of guilt. The guilt of never being proud of her heritage the way that her mother was, also the guilt of always being embarrassed by her mother’s “Chinese” behaviors. Jing-mei did not realize that she did not truly appreciate her mother, but now that her mother is gone she knows. One of Jing-mei’s mother’s lifelong dreams was to find the daughters she had to abandon during a war torn China. It isn’t until after her death that the whereabouts of the two sisters are discovered.
Even though it is within the same culture, the film shows how Chinese immigrants are forced to “adjust” and give up much of their identity in order to thrive in America. Imagine moving to a foreign country and raising children who don’t speak your language, understand your history, believe your beliefs, or share your values. The Joy Luck Club opens with a short story about a Chinese woman who desires to move to America, believing her future daughters will be treated more fairly there than they would be in Chinese society. “Nobody will look down on her,” she says, “because I will make her speak only perfect American English.” In America, she hopes, her daughter can leave behind the
Her mother’s constant insults also do nothing to uplift her self-esteem, instead hinder her development of self-identity. Kingston lacks voice because the sexist nature of Chinese culture which actively suppresses the voices of young women. Kingston even states when she was a newborn her mother cut her tongue and “sliced up the frenulum” which is symbolic of Chinese culture stifling the voices of young women. Eventually young Kingston finds her voice and identity by using the minor characters as a template for behavior by mimicking their actions and adopting a similar mindset. By idolizing the great women warriors in Chinese stories such as Fa Mulan and Ts'ai Yen, Kingston embraces her identity as a Chinese American and finds her voice.
Mrs. Woo has moved to America in 1949 from China after losing everything including her mother, her father, her first husband and her twin daughters (p. 542). After losing everything, coming to America would be a second chance for starting for Jing-Mei’s mother as she sees America as the Land of Opportunity. She was a housekeeper, going from house to house to make a living, and provide for her family. She wanted her daughter to try every opportunity she felt would eventually make her a star, such as being the next Shirley Temple by becoming an actor, intellectual testing, and when neither of those areas was working, she then decided that Jing will be a pianist.
The Joy Luck Club Analysis of themes, characters and setting Question: ‘June felt she never knew her mother, yet she has to tell her sisters about her. What does she learn about herself – and her mother – by the end of the film?’ The Joy Luck Club is an emotional story about four women who saw life as they had seen it back in China. During 1930s China, women were treated as second class citizens and were often abused. Through sad and painful experiences, these four women had tried to raise their daughters to live the American dream by giving them love and support; such things which were not available to them when they were young. These women expose their individual experiences in narrative form as they re-lived it in their memories, to teach their daughters about what they went through.