Joy Luck Club Analysis

1001 Words5 Pages
Growing up torn between two distinctive cultures, the daughters in the Joy Luck Club strived to depart with their Chinese values and exert their American beliefs. Nevertheless, as they grew in ages and wisdom, to a large extent, all daughters reflected the mothers’ deeply instilled characters and values. A mother’s influence on her daughter is mostly demonstrated when the daughter was growing up. For instance, Lindo has mastered the arts of invisible strength and duplicity, like the wind with “genuine thoughts inside that...no one could ever take away”. She cunningly convinced the Huang’s family to free her from the abominable marriage and later wittingly escaped to America. She understood the significance of hiding her true intentions from…show more content…
Later, as a chess prodigy, she was capable of deceiving her opponent, transforming a “seemingly simple and childlike strategy” into a “devastating and irrevocable course.” Waverly was fortunate: she inherited her mother’s intellects and was in a conducive environment to nurture her talent. Subsequently, this quality was traced in her adulthood, portraying how her mother had successfully moulded her permanent identity. Likewise, Lena grew up vulnerable to Ying-ying quiet and ghostly side. Ying-ying saw bad omens in everything; she lamented about “things being out of balance”, about a “heaviness around her” instead of joys when having a baby. Unsurprisingly, her superstition impacted Lena drastically as she slowly became just as pessimistic as her mother: “I worried about that baby, that it was stuck somewhere between my mother’s stomach and this crib in my room.” Under great…show more content…
An-mei, living a suppressed life for most of her childhood, was scarred with her mother’s inability to express herself and subsequent suicide. Yet, it was from this experience that she realised her mother “killed her own weak spirits so she could give (her) a stronger one”, so that she “learned how to shout.” Since the midst of a cornerstone of her life, she held on to this notion throughout her life and tried to pass it down to Rose. Despite her best efforts, however, Rose turned to become submissive and indecisive in her marriage with Ted. Yet under An-mei’s influence, Rose ultimately learnt to stand up for herself: “You can’t just pull me out of your life and throw me away.” She learnt the power of the weeds, of her supposed weaknesses and turned it into a strength. While this might be an impulsive act and does not reflect Rose’s true characters, it undeniably requires courage, especially from someone who had always been passive like Rose. She had proven that she could be strong and independent, like An-mei’s aspiration, she just needed a driving force to reveal what she was capable of. Similarly, Jing-mei used to push away or disregard her Chinese identity. Although Suyuan tried to pass down her Chinese cultures and values to Jing-mei through storytelling, she “never thought (Suyuan’s) Kweilin story was anything but a
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