Examples Of Sacrifice In The Joy Luck Club

Throughout her childhood life her mother, Suyuan, was continuously pushing her to be her best. Jing-Mei purposely tried to fail at everything to prover to her mother that she could never become a great and famous person. Then after a piano recital that went horridly wrong, her and her mother had an argument and their relationship was never the same. Many years later Suyuan tried to give Jing-mei the piano that she had as a child. She refused the offer, but than a year later her mother died and Jing-Mei was cleaning out her mother’s house and decided to play the piano and she was surprised that she still knew how.

Mei-Li and Hong’s relationship starts happy and healthy, and everyone around can see. An example is shown, “At other times, when Mei-Li returned from her walks, there was a glow in her eyes that did not die for days” (108). During the beginning of their relationship, while Pei and Mei-Li were living in Auntie Yee’s girl’s house, Mei-Li would secretly take walks to meet with Hong. Mei-Li would always come home happy, and that happiness stuck with her. Mei-Li was in love with Hong.

Although An-mei later learns to speak up and assert herself, she fears that she has handed down a certain timidness to her daughter Rose. An-Mei never knew her mother very well, and she didn’t want to be the same mother to her daughter. Growing up An-mei lived with her grandmother Popo. An-mei says at the start of her story, “When I was a young girl in China, my grandmother told me my mother was a ghost.

What can I tell them about my mother? I don’t know anything,”(Tan 30). Tan is saying that Jing-mei

She then uses these “new thoughts” and ideas to state that she “won’t let her [mother] change” her into the person she seeks her daughter to be. When Jing-Mei experiences a realization that she is her own person and not simply another part of her mother, she can embrace the comfort of knowing that she will not change for anyone, and is simply extraordinary for having her own thoughts and feelings. This reflects how Amy Tan can understand her thoughts and feelings about the hardships in her relationship with her mother as a way to connect more closely to her characters and make them more realistic in her writing (“How Amy Tan’s family stories made her a

(Tan 24). through this it can be said that Jing-Mei’s mother has a very different culture compared to

This disagreement quickly became a source of resentment and anger for both of them, but Jing-Mei and her mother were unable to resolve this conflict because of their different backgrounds and experiences. The story showcases how relationships between mothers and daughters can be strained because of differences in culture and a lack of communication. One of the difficulties between Jing-Mei and her mother is their different cultural backgrounds, which is supported by two points from the story. Firstly, Jing-Mei and her mother both disagreed on the opportunities that existed in America. According to Singer, Amy Tan uses “two entirely

In the beginning of the passage, Jing-mei goes into detail about her side of her and her mothers relationship. She says that her mother believed that in America, you could be anything that you wanted. However, although she believed this, she didn’t let Jing-mei live that way. Her mother never let her be herself, be “anything she wanted”.

Thesis Statement about theme of literary work- In Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, expressions of love and hatred are shown in multiple mother-daughter relationships resulting in negative impacts such as pain, bitterness, and regret because of their differing opinions. Support Point #1- Suyuan Woo guiltily leaves her twin daughters on the ground in China as she walks away in tears.

“Communication is the key to a successful relationship, attentiveness, and consistency. Without it, there is no relationship,” (Bleau). The Joy Luck Club is a novel written by Amy Tan. Set in the twentieth century, this novel depicts the life of four Chinese immigrant women escaping their past and their American-grown daughters. The novel reveals the mothers’ hardship-filled past and motivations alongside with the daughters’ inner conflicts and struggles.

At this point Jing Mei had decided she was not going to conform to her mothers ideas. She was not going to become what her mother wanted and was not going to be her little puppet anymore. Jing Mei decided she did not want to be a little fine-tuned Chinese girl and that she wanted to be a version of herself which she liked. Jing Mei Too’s rebellious actions followed this epiphany she had in the bathroom when it came to the next task her mother would set forth for

personal satisfaction. Jing-Mei struggles with the difficulty of choosing between her desires and her mother’s. Throughout the short story, she wants to live up to her mother’s expectations, but she is unhappy because she is being involuntarily forced into tasks. This brings up the idea for Jing-Mei to assert her independence to find her own path. She realizes that all this hard work she’s been doing is getting her nowhere, and decides that she is done following her mom’s instructions mindlessly.

When people experience something it has an effect on their views, and this can cause many problems in their lives. In Amy Tan’s novel The Joy Luck Club, she shows how conflict can affect the relationship between mothers and daughters. Through the mother Suyuan and her daughter Jing Mei, Tan shows us what can happen when you let those experiences become a conflict.

Jing Mei, while portrayed as an obedient child, is only willing to listen to her mother to a certain extent. Throughout the story, it is consistently hinted that Jing Mei would eventually explode against her mother as an attempt to free herself from her mother’s chains. In addition, after the fiasco at the piano recital, she eventually derives further from her mother’s wishes as she “didn 't get straight A...didn 't become class president...didn 't get into Stanford...dropped out of college.” (54). On the flip side, Jing Mei’s mother is a stereotypical Chinese parent who is fully determined to ensure her daughter’s success in a new environment.

Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club presents the stories of eight women who have multiple cultures in their lives who struggle to accept them both. Jing- Mei “June” Woo is one such character. Over the course of the novel, Jing-Mei experiences conflicts between her mother’s Chinese heritage and her American upbringing. The two cultures present in June Woo’s life cause both confusion and frustration with herself and within her relationship with her mother, revealing the complexities of mother-daughter relationships.