原来的正文

1. Introduction:Amy Tan and her The Joy Luck Club
Amy Tan, born February 19, 1952, is a Chinese American writer whose works explore mother-daughter relationships. Amy Tan was born in Oakland California to Chinese immigrants John Tan, an electrical engineer and Baptist minister, and Daisy, who was forced to leave her three daughters from a previous marriage behind in Shanghai. This incident provided the basis for Tan's first novel, 1989 New York Times bestseller The Joy Luck Club. It focuses on four Chinese American immigrant families in San Francisco, California,who start a club known as "the Joy Luck Club," playing the Chinese game of mahjong for money while feasting on a variety of foods. The book is structured somewhat like a mahjong game, with four parts divided into four sections to create sixteen chapters. The three mothers and four daughters (one mother, Suyuan Woo, dies before the novel opens) share stories about their lives in the form of vignettes Each part is preceded by a parable relating to the game.
2. Different growth environment of the mother and daughter
In the book The Joy Luck Club, the mothers and daughters grow at a very different enviroment. Their different background lead them to think at a quite different way. For many times, they can’t understand each other because they stand in their own point without considering that their mothers or daughters are growing in a totally different society.
2.1 Mothers’ bitter experience
These four mothers all live in the old china where man are the center of the family and society. Women has no right to say no to her detiny. Take Lindo Jong as an example, her family is so poor that her mother has to send her to a rich family as the wife of the family’s small son. That boy is stil very young without knowing anything between woman and man.Lindo wants to leave while her mother-in law don’t agree. She wants Lindo to give borth to a son so that their family wealth can be inherited. From this, we can see woman at that time are usually viewed as a tool of giving borth to child.
-------- Analysis in The Joy Luck Club
A another one is Yingying. She is a beautiful girl so that many men have fallen in love with her. Finally, she picks a ideal one and marries him. However, after the marriage,her huaband began to stay outside late at night and falls in love with other women. Yingying gives borth to a baby but her huaband take his lover home without considering Yingying’s feeling. I think it is because in old China, men are allowed to have many wamen at the same time. Yingying has no way to revolt, so she kills her baby and runs away.
2.2 Daughters’ new enviroment
These four girls’ mother are all Chinese, yet they have been in American since they were born. In America, children have equal rights with their parents. They can choose their own life in the way they like. It is not difficult to understand why American-born daughters cannot like the way of their mothers educate them.
3. Mothers’ Mandatory order to their daughters
Chinese mothers like to force their daughters to do something that she thinks it is good to their daughter’s future. They want them to be successful instead of wasting their time. They are likely to put their unfinished dream on their daughters. Reasons are many and diverse.
3.1 Want daughters to be fenghuang
Associate with the modern society, almost every woman to make their daughter succeed. They always make their daughter do as their advices and ignore their daughters’ feeling.Each daughter unwilling to obey. For example,Lindo asks her daughter to play chess and take part in a contest. A fter winning the game, Lindo boasts her daughter’s prize to others. Waverly can not understand this way and even hate this. She wrangles with her mother. In her view, it is her own honor. And it is none business of her mother. She asks her mother that if she wants to show off, wins the game by herself. Her mother’s mandatory order makes her to give up chess.Mothers would like a daughter to obey their wills while daughters would like to be free and independent.
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3.2 In order to make up
Sometimes mothers may f eel they don’t play well the way as a mother. They feel sorry for their daughters so they offer them everything they coud think of. However, they don’t take into account that their daughter may not like it. The typical story is that of the Woo’. During WW II, she was forced to abandon her twin daughters in her attempt to flee for her life in face of a Japanese attack. Before she left them, she hid in their clothes some jewels to pay for their care, and also left her name and address in Shanghai so that they could be returned later. After she lost everything in the bombing, her house and her family, she did everything possible but could not recover the babies. Thus Woo let her daughter June to learn piano and become a lady. She pay all her love to her only daughter along with her.
3.3 Compare with others
Chinese parents express their love to children through criticism. On the contrary, the American people show affection through encouragement.
For example, Suyuan always compares her daughter Jingmei with Waverly. She always puts out Jingmei’s bad points. These things make jingmei unhappy. She believes that her mother wants to control her and likes Waverly more than her. Comparing her own daughter with others will make them proud, while at the s ame time they will break their daughter’s heart.
4. Daughters’ Treason
We all have the same feeling that if someone keeps asking you doing something again and again, you will feel sick. That is the same in the relationship between mother and daughter. Because of this, they often have contradictions.
-------- Analysis in The Joy Luck Club
4.1 Too much interfere
Suyuan wants her daughter to became a swan, which represents her hope. After force her daughter for many times, which makes June feel unhappy. In order to show resistance to her mother, she decides not to play the piano that her mother tries her best to let her learn.It is a tragedy to June as she really has a talent for playing the piano. She does not realize it until her mother died. The treason for this tragedy is misunderstanding between two generations in different cultures.
4.2 Marriage problem
4.2.1.AA lifestyle
Lena’s marriage has to be worried about. She is in love with her boss while he is a stingy and self centered man who accounts in every detail. They two people from before to after marriage, divided all expenses equally. The man always looking for opportunities for using her money. In fact, his salary is seven times and a half as much as hers.Her book and magazines, he looks, but she paid, she doesn't eat ice cream, but it should be equally paid... Day in and day out, When she realized that she is using calculator to calculate the cost all the time, she knew that their marriage is gradually being unravelled, but he doesn't feel anything amiss. Mother Yingying can’t accept th is kind of marriage at all,for she comes from old China. As soon as she knows her daughter’s marriag e lifestyle, she asks Lena to divorce.
4.2.2 Family Position
Unexpectedly, An-mei,who watched her mother be forced to marry a rich person with three wives, has a daughter who share the similar experience with her grandma. Before their marriage, his family had already looks down upon her because of her east oriental borth. Her boy friend, still in love with her, fully demonstrated on his love and respect to her. Thus they get marride without family blessing.
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After marriage, her husband immediately rush to family enterprises. She said, she would try to play the role of a good wife, to a point that means there is no self.
She found her and her husband's marriage was in trouble, she asked her husband 's idea of the problem. When they are in love, he can understand, but now he doesn't know and she could not answer as well.
Their marriage was never a happy one, so when her husband was having an affair, they come to the verge of divorce. An-m ei, personally speaking, doesn’t want her daughter to marry a rich person as her mother does, so they have different opinion on this question.
4.3 Language can cause problem
Let’s see the dialogue as follows:
Waverly Jong：As is the Chinese cook's custom, my mother always insults her own cooking, but only with the dishes she serves with special pride.
Lindo Jong：This dish not salty enough. No flavor. It's too bad to eat, but please. Waverly Jong：That was our cue to eat some and proclaim it the best she'd ever made. Waverly knows her mother’s indication in her words, while her boy friend doesn’t. He says what he think directely. Absolutely, Lindo feels unsatisfied.
The linguistic barrier exists between each mother and their children. The children complains their mothers’ bad English mixed with Chinese words. They think their mothers are stupid while mothers think children know nothing. It shows that there is lack of communication between two genaration
e to harmony
Waverly has once married a Chinese man her mother picks for her. However she herself doesn’t like him. Thus, at last she divorces him. Sometimes later, she falls in love with a
-------- Analysis in The Joy Luck Club
foreign person Rich. She is afraid that her mother will not like him. Then, they have a talk at a barbershop.
Waverly Jong：Mom, why don't you like Rich?
Lindo Jong：Is Rich you afraid I not like? If I don't like your Rich, I act polite, say nothing, let him have big cancer, let my daughter be a widow. I like Rich, of course I do. To allow him to marry such a daughter!
Waverly Jong：You don't know, you don't know the power you have over me. One word from you, one look, and I'm four years old again, crying myself to sleep, because nothing I do can ever, ever please you.
Finally they break the silence and decide to speak out their ideas. They hug and cry, then come to a harmonious relation.
The four pairs of mothers and daughters once can’t understand each other.At the end of the book, the situation is changed. Jingmei can understand her mother’s love; Lindo accepts Waverly’s husband who is a foreigner that she dislikes; Lena approves her value to her American husband after her mother’s advice… daughters starts to understand their mothers and the west can understand the east.
6.Conclusion:instinct will beat every obstruct
The Joy Luck Club is about the four Chinese immigrant women and their children grew up in the United States. The title of the novel The Joy Luck Club is the party where traditional mothers played mahjong. These women moved to the United States for decades, but they still think constantly as their traditional education teach them. They ,abide by the Chinese traditions for thousands of years, the thought has already penetrated in the blood, women have become the followers of men. Their common ideal is to give strict education to their daughters so that they can escape their destiny and become a happy woman. However, the mothers’ mandatory order make the girls revolt in their different ways.In American society, race, class, gender are all inequal to everyone. Two generations of women have a fight to reach the same goal by different routes, by mutual recognition. In the tragedy and comedy, the deepest impression is not what characters do , but their silence. However once the silence is broken, the destructive power will immediately disappear. Human nature,which has been
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suppressed for a long time will recover. The balanced and harmonious relationship will be restored. The main line of The Joy Luck Club is silence and breaking the silence.
I realize another meaning of the joy luck club. “Joy” stands for “join” It is a link between the two generations. In the party daughters and mothers have meals and communicate together. It is also the link between the east and the west. Mothers show Chinese dishes here and play Chinese traditional game---- mahjong. And all different colors friends gather here. It signs conciliatory of these two cultures.
-------- Analysis in The Joy Luck Club
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