This essay, mainly focusing on Suyuan Woo and her daughter June, is aiming to further analyze the causes and manifestations of this complicated mother-daughter relationship. The relationship is by no means conflicting and it is not hard to understand. First of all, the conflict is due to the daughters’ attitudes towards their Chineseness, which can be normally understood as the Chinese character and traditional culture, in all, it can be understood as the temperament of a Chinese. Different from their mothers, the daughter generation is born and raised in America, what they have experienced is enculturation, and they are trying to get rid of their Chineseness and every influence of the mother generation. Far from knowing Chinese culture and without the awareness to know, the mother generation is alien and ridiculous to them.
Amy Tan’s novel, The Joy Luck Club uses much characterization. Each character is portrayed in different yet similar ways. When she was raised, she would do whatever she could to please other people. She even “gave up her life for her parents promise” (49), I the story The Red Candle we get to see how Tan portrays Lindo Jong and how she is brought to life. Tan likes to show Lindo through indirect characterization.
Chua’s text is very harsh toned, yet effective due to the use of all three appeals: Ethos, Logos, and Pathos. The author is raised by Chinese parents, which defines a big part of who she is. In the text Chua uses Ethos to establish her personal experience with parenting. She chooses a hard, and a time consuming parenting technique “ The Chinese method” to raise both of her daughters. For instance:“ A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids well I can tell them, Bachour 2 !
When she travels to China, she discovers the Chinese essence within herself, thus realizing a deep connection to her mother that she had always ignored. She also brings Suyuan’s story to her long-lost twin daughters, and, once reunited with her half-sisters, gains an even more profound understanding of who her mother was.For the most part, Jing-mei’s fears echo those of her peers, the other daughters of the Joy Luck Club members. They have always identified with Americans but are beginning to regret having neglected their Chinese heritage. Her fears also speak to a reciprocal fear shared by the mothers, who wonder whether, by giving their daughters American opportunities and self-sufficiency, they have alienated them from their Chinese heritage.Jing-mei is representative in other ways as well. She believes that her mother’s constant criticism bespeaks a lack of affection, when in fact her mother’s severity and high expectations are expressions of love and faith in her daughter.
Cooking for the family has meaning in each story of The Joy Luck Club, because cooking is a sign of love in Chinese culture. A main point of the novel was the mothers’ wishes to keep the old traditions, and the daughters’ wishes for them to be more understanding of the American culture. Tan and her mother had the same feelings, but, just as the daughters in the book, Tan learns the value of her heritage and embraces it (Kramer 60). Her mother told Tan many stories(Kramer 48). She told many stories about her own life.
The Daughters in The Joy Luck Club battle the cultural differences between the ancient values of their immigrant mothers and the American way of life they live in. In China, the mothers were taught strength of character was built through obedience. In modern American, the daughters are exposed to a society where women have more freedom of expression. Even clothing is different in each culture. The daughters are being raised on conflicting cultural differences.
She felt that American school would be a better fit for her. Once Elizabeth got older she was given permission to stop attending Chinese school. Elizabeth’s struggles with her own heritage and the heritage of the country she lived in tore her. She so desperately wanted to fit into the American society, as she states “I thought of myself as multicultural. I preferred tacos to egg rolls; I enjoyed Cinco de Mayo more than Chinese New Year.” (Wong ,24) She favored the crisp new smells such as “the soft French perfume that my American teacher wore” (Wong ,24) over the mothball smell that the Chinese school held.
There are distinct differences between the Chinese culture parenting style and the Western, but the key commonality is that both parents desire the success for their child’s future. Chua, starts her article by addressing the most common question. “How Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids?”(Chau1). Her answer is quite simple: most of the things that other children are allowed to do, hers were not. Take playing an instrument for an example.
Authors have successfully used the dialogue between mother and daughter to say they have absolutely become a family. By using this method, the conversation between Leah and Joan reveals the love of mother and child has been greatly improved. The statement of Leah “Yeah, sorry” indicates her transformation to stop arguing with her mother. It also shows the realization of Leah and starts to accept her fault during the time in China. The statement of Joan “My father was asking me, and your father was asking you.
In a letter to her sister, Jane Austen wrote of Elizabeth Bennet, ‘I must confess I think her as delightful a character as ever appeared in print.’ Do you agree or disagree? Elizabeth Bennet is Pride and Prejudice’s heroine, being the second oldest of the five Bennet sisters, she is both pretty and smart. She is very good at her ability to analyse other people, but can sometimes be wrong. She is able to overcome her own prejudice however by the end of the novel. Elizabeth is one character that has very few thoughts on money and social positions, and because of this is able to rely her own judgements on characteristics and personalities.