The Joy Luck Club Essay

Book report of The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan Author 's biography and awards,
Amy Tan was born in Oakland, California, in 1952, and now lives with her husband, tax lawyer Louis DeMattei, in San Francisco. The Joy Luck Club was her first and perhaps most well known book. It brought her great success and made her name known around the world. The book was made into a movie by director Wayne Wang, which Tan produced and wrote the screenplay for. Tan 's other novels include The Kitchen God 's Wife, The Bonesetter 's Daughter and The Hundred Secret Senses. Much of the content of her books is autobiographical. Tan has said that Kitchen was written after Joy because her mother, Daisy, complained that people thought Suyuan from Joy was based on her. She urged Tan to write the true story of her life. Though much of the book is fictionalized, Kitchen does contain the details of Tan 's mother 's life: her twelve-year-long bad marriage (she told Amy she might even kill her first husband if she ever saw him again); her life during the war; the children she lost. In her stories, Tan blends Eastern and Western
cultures, often by telling a "Chinese" story through "American" eyes, and vice versa.

This practice of combing and contrasting Eastern and Western culture began in Tan 's early adulthood, when she reached a breaking point in her relationship with her mother. They had fought throughout her childhood, and Amy was bent on rebelling in whatever way she could. She gradually began to realize that one of their problems was that she did not understand her mother, who desperately wanted to be understood. Tan has said that her mother needed someone to truly listen to her, to relive her life with her. Long conversations with her mother evolved into The Joy Luck Club. Tan created the characters of Rose, Waverly, June and Lena to personify her own questions and concerns. She finally saw that she had to learn about her mother 's life in order to understand her own history and personality. The Hundred Secret Senses, another book about two relatives, one American and one Chinese, highlights Tan 's confusions about the two cultures she grew up in. It deals with her superstitions and beliefs in the supernatural--she has a friend who predicted his own murder, and after he was killed the names of the two killers came to her out of nowhere. She also has a history of electronic equipment malfunctioning in her presence. Though she accepts these traditionally Chinese otherworldly elements in her life, she also remembers that her mother 's superstitions negatively affected Amy and her brother for a long time.

When Amy was fifteen, her father and brother both died of brain tumors. Daisy decided that their house was cursed, and that nine bad things would happen there. She insisted that they move, and they eventually settled in Switzerland, which alternately pleased and enraged Amy. She and her husband have decided not to have children because Amy remembers her childhood as very unhappy, and cannot be sure she would not make the same mistakes her mother made. In fact, Daisy 's influence over Amy, both positive and negative, continued until Daisy died. Though Daisy, like Suyuan, had always had ambitions for Amy, and tried to dismiss her interest in storytelling, once Amy became a successful writer, Daisy took credit for her daughter 's achievements. Though this is probably unfair to Amy, it is clear that Daisy 's life and personality have been providing her daughter with her subject matter, consciously or not: women, both American and Chinese; intersecting and conflicting cultures; and the relationships between mothers and daughters. Tan has often been praised for the universal quality of her themes. As E.D. Huntley says, "It seems fair to predict Tan will have a place in American literary history, not as an ethnic writer, but as an American writer who illuminates brilliantly and sensitively a distinctive and colorful aspect of the American experience."
Bibliography

Huntley, E.D. Amy Tan: A Critical Companion. London: Greenwood Press, 1998

Lyall, Sarah. "At Home with Amy Tan: In the Country of the Spirits." New York Times Book Review, December 28, 1995

Rothstein, Mervyn. "A New Novel by Amy Tan, Who 's Still Trying to Adapt to Success." New York Times Book Review, June 11, 1991

Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. New York: G.P. Putnam 's Sons, 1989.

charaters analysis
Major Characters
Jing-mei (June) Woo: Daughter of Suyuan and Canning Woo.
Jing-mei always had a troubled relationship with her mother, so when Suyuan dies, she has to deal with her grief, frustration, and her many questions. She never understood why her mother was never satisfied with her. She never knew the whole story of hermother 's previous life in China. She does not speak Chinese fluently, and she tried to reject Chinese culture and even, for a while, believed that she was not Chinese at all. After her mother 'sdeath, she begins to see that her mother 's history is part of her, and China is part of her identity. When she finally meets hermother 's other daughters in China, she feels like she has her mother back. She also begins to see that though they often fought and rarely saw eye to eye, her mother did love her and understood her, at times, even better than she understood
herself.
Suyuan Woo: Mother ofJing-mei, Wang Chwun Yu and Wang Chwun Hwa. Wife of Canning Woo and, previously, Wang Fuchi. Suyuan had a troubled past--she gave up her twindaughters when they were babies and lost her first husband in the war. Though she married Canning in China and moved to California, she never forgot those babies, and spent her life trying to find them. She was at times a difficult mother for Jing-mei, and she was competitive and bullying to some of her friends. But she cared for her family, and the Joy Luck Club, so everyone misses her when she dies. Her husband and American daughter fulfill her greatest wish--finding her Chinesedaughters--to try to bring her a kind of peace she could not have when she was alive.
Lindo Jong: Mother of Waverly, Vincent, and Winston. Wife of Tin Jong. Lindo 's best friend is Suyuan, but they fight constantly. Lindo has always tried to take credit for Waverly 's success, and because she feels close to her daughter, she tries to control her life. She gets upset when Waverly decides to marry a white man, but when he refuses to be intimidated by her, she accepts him. Lindo, like Suyuan, had a hard life in China--she was forced to marry a man she hated--but she used her cleverness to escape her fate. She received enough money from her in-laws to come to America. She is competitive and intimidating, even to her daughter and husband.
Ying-ying St. Clair: Though she was born a rich and spoiled girl, Ying-ying ends up relatively poor and meek. She believes her haughtiness cursed her. Because she thought she was too good for any man, she was forced to marry a bad man. From then on, she believed that she could see things before they happened, and she gives this power to her daughter Lena. She sees herself as still strong on the inside, but knows that she has willingly given up her strength so she will no longer cause herself such pain. She married Clifford St. Clair without really caring about him--she says she could not care about anyone, because she has turned herself into a ghost. By the end of the book, she realizes that she never should have done this: it has made her daughter weak as well. She decides to show her daughter how to be strong.
An-mei Hsu: Mother of Rose Hsu Jordan, Ruth, Janice, Mark, Matthew, Luke and Bing. Wife of George Hsu. Mother-in-law of Ted Jordan. An-mei is a mixture of strength and weakness. Like her own mother, who committed suicide to give her daughter a better life, An-mei sometimes accepts her sorrows too easily. She acknowledges that she and her daughter Rose are sometimes too easily influenced by others. But she also has a very strong faith in her ability to make things right. When Bing dies, for a long time she fully believes she can bring him back. She learned to have faith in herself, and to stand up for herself, from her mother, who told her to have a strong identity.
Waverly Jong: Daughter of Lindo and Tin, former wife of Marvin, fiance of Rich Schields. Waverly was a proud and often spoiled girl. She was a champion chess player and liked to brag about it. However, even her strong personality was no match for her mother. Lindo made Waverly feel so bad after they fought over her chess abilities that she quit playing chess altogether. Lindo has always been able to influence her and make her see flaws where she never saw them before, so that she, like Lindo, is never satisfied. She is therefore worried that Lindo will make her dislike Rich, her fiance who she loves deeply.
Lena St. Clair: Daughter of Ying-ying and Clifford St. Clair. Wife of Harold Livotny. Lena has always known that her mother was fragile, and she spent her childhood fearing that their family could fall apart at any moment. She thus became fragile and easily frightened herself. Today, she allows her husband to bully her, but is slowly realizing how angry with him she is. She is disappointed with her mother and never understood her father very well. Even though she looks English-Irish like him, she has always felt Chinese. She seems to believe, like Ying-ying, that she and her mother have the same spirit.
Rose Hsu Jordan: Wife of Ted Jordan, daughter of An-mei Hsu. Rose often feels guilty and powerless. She sometimes thinks that she was responsible for her younger brother 's death. She accepts the blame that Ted heaps on her for the failure of their marriage. She has nightmares where a traditional Chinese character chases her. At first, she believes that her mother does not understand her, and wants her to stay in her marriage even if she is unhappy. But then she realizes that all her mother wants is for her to be strong. She finally stands up to Ted and suddenly realizes how powerful she really is. Then she feels connected to her mother in a way she never did before.
Minor Characters
Canning Woo: Father of Jing-mei, husband of Suyuan. Canning is a quiet, even-tempered man who often allowed his wife to make the important decisions in their family. He never took anything as seriously as she did. He is very hurt by her death, and wishes he had better understood her need to find her other daughters. When he returns to China, Jing-mei can see he feels happy and at home the way he rarely does in America.
Popo: An-mei 's grandmother. An-mei loves her grandmother and sees that her harshness is mostly a sign of love, but she abandons the love of Popo in favor of her mother. Popo never realized that her daughter, An-mei 's mother, had not married her second husband willingly, so she died without forgiving her for 'dishonoring ' the family.
An-mei 's mother: Though she is never named, she has a profound influence over An-mei. Beautiful and stylish, yet condemned to the sad life of a Fourth Wife, she teaches An-mei both how sad life can be and the few ways one can overcome that sadness. She loves her daughter so much that she kills herself so that she can have a better life.
Tyan-yu: Lindo Jong 's first husband. Spoiled and bad-tempered, from the time they are very young he tries to hurt her as much as possible. He lies to his mother, telling her that Lindo won 't sleep with him, when it is he who will not sleep with Lindo. She escapes him because he is superstitious and cowardly, so when she tells him his ancestors said he would die if he stayed married to her, he was happy to let her leave and gave her enough money to go to America.
Huang Taitai : Lindo 's mother in law, Tyan-yu 's mother. She spoiled her son all his life, and always believed that her family was better than Lindo 's because they were richer. Though she never did any work herself, she enjoys ordering other people around. Though she usually thinks Lindo is stupid, she is frightened when Lindo makes up the story of her dream about their ancestors. Believing that she and her son are in danger, she makes Lindo leave.
Clifford St. Clair: Husband of Ying-ying St. Clair and father of Lena. Though he loved his wife, he never understood her. He did not even speak her language, and had his daughter translate for him. He renamed Ying-ying Betty without a second thought. He never knew that she came from a rich family. He was always cheerful and tried to pretend there was nothing wrong, even when Ying-ying was very depressed. He died young because his arteries were blocked.
Ted Jordan: Husband of Rose Hsu Jordan. He always enjoyed having control over Rose, until he made a mistake in his surgical practice. Then he tried to force her to make more decisions in their life together, and got angry when she could not. He cheated on her and told her he wanted a divorce, trying to bully her into giving up her house. When he sees he can no longer control her, he is afraid.
Bing Hsu: Rose 's younger brother, who drowned at the beach because no one was watching him. His death is the reason that An-mei lost her faith in God--she believed that Bing could not be really dead, and tried to bring him back with her faith. When she saw this could not be done, she put her bible under the table in the kitchen.
Harold Livotny: Lena St. Clair 's husband. He takes much of the credit for Lena 's work, underpays her, and takes her for granted. He insists they share all costs, and reminds her often that he makes more money than she does. He controls what they buy and what their house looks like. Lena wonders who hurt him so much that he rejects the intimacy that comes from sharing.
Rich Schields: Waverly Jong 's fiance. He loves her for being herself, something she never experienced before. He takes care of her daughter and is not intimidated by her mother, even though Lindo at first dislikes him because he is white. He fits comfortably into her life, accepting her Chinese heritage and her American cultural background.
Shoshana Jong : Waverly 's daughter with her first husband. Though Waverly hadn 't planned to have Shoshana, she now loves her unconditionally. She is very pleased that Shoshana and Rich get along.
Wu Tsing : An-mei 's mother 's second husband. He raped mother so that she would be forced to marry him. Superstitious and selfish, he cheats on all his wives and throws his money away, but then repents of all his sins when mother kills herself.

,plot overview
Plot Summary
After her mother Suyuan 's death, thirty-six year old Jing-mei (June) Woo joins The Joy Luck Club. The club, which Suyuanfounded in China during the war, consists of four women playingmah jong, eating good dinners, and gambling. Suyuan created the club as a way to improve the spirits of her friends during wartime. Her first husband died in the war and she was forced to abandon their twin baby daughters on the side of a road. Soon after, she met and married Canning Woo and moved to America. There, she restarted the club with three other women her age: An-mei Hsu, Lindo Jong, and Ying-ying St. Clair. The four women and theirdaughters, who are about the same age, grow older together, and each mother/daughter relationship is full of sadness, anger and joy. June, for example, isn 't sure she can replace a dead mother she hardly knew. Then she learns that her mother 's otherdaughters have been found: they live in China, and the otherwomen of the Joy Luck Club are sending June to meet them.
The mothers remember their childhood in China. An-mei lived with her grandmother and was forbidden to even speak her mother 's name. When her mother tried to rescue her, she was sent away. Everyone tells An-mei that her mother dishonored their family by marrying again after her husband died. Still, her mother returned to nurse her own mother after she grew very sick. Lindo 's marriage was arranged when she was very young. She hated the spoiled young man she was required to live with. When he wouldn 't sleep with her and her mother-in-law demanded a baby, Lindo made up a story about an angry ancestor who would kill her husband if they stayed married. She was given enough money to go to America and told to keep her mouth shut about their curse. Ying-ying remembers going to a moon festival as a young girl and finding out that the magic and ceremony is often just an act.
The daughters remember growing up with Chinese mothers in California. Sometimes they felt like they weren 't Chinese at all, and didn 't know how to deal with the Chinese culture in their homes. Waverly was a chess champion, but she quit when she and Lindo fought and Lindo told her it was not as easy to play or not play as she believed. Now she worries that her mother will not accept her second husband. Lindo was always able to make Waverly change her mind, seeing flaws where she once saw perfection, and she doesn 't want this to happen with Rich. Lena remembers her mother as a meek woman who always wondered what bad thing would happen next. She made Lena just as meek and afraid-but Lena learned from a neighbor that not every problem is the end of the world. She knows her mother can see things before they happen, so she wonders what her mother will think of her relationship with her husband: he bullies her and takes her for granted. Sure enough, Ying-ying doesn 't understand Lena 's life with Harold. Rose Jordan has some of the same problems with lack of confidence. Her husband asked her for a divorce recently because she could never make any decisions. Rose still feels guilty because her youngest brother died by accident when she was fourteen. She can 't decide what to do about her husband. Then she realizes that her mother supports her. She sleeps for three days and then contacts her husband, telling him that she will not leave their house like he wants her to. She will fight for it. June Woo remembers that her mother was never satisfied with her: she always wanted June to be a genius, so June was determined to waste any talent she had, just to spite her mother. As an adult, June has always felt inferior to Waverly, and believed her mother thought she was as well. During new year 's dinner, she got into a fight with Waverly, and afterward her mother told her that she understood her and implied that she loved her.
The mothers think about their pasts. An-mei remembers that her mother killed herself to make a better life for her children, because in a marriage with four other wives, that was the only way for her children to have any of the benefits from her rich husband (who she was forced to marry, contrary to what her family believed). Ying-ying remembers how she gave up her strength, her will, so that she would no longer be hurt when bad things happened to her. She now realizes that in doing this she has made her daughter weak as well, and resolves to teach her daughter to be strong. Lindo remembers how she came to America, and, looking at her adult daughter Waverly, she sees how similar they are-both inside and out. The book ends with June going to China to meet her half-sisters. Her father is happily reunited with his family. June is at first nervous, but when she meets first her father 's family and then her sisters, she sees that part of her is Chinese after all: her blood.

The Joy Luck Club Plot Analysis
Most good stories start with a fundamental list of ingredients: the initial situation, conflict, complication, climax, suspense, denouement, and conclusion. Great writers sometimes shake up the recipe and add some spice.
The book a whole doesn’t follow the classic plot structure, largely because the book is designed as a collection of interwoven short stories. Each of the storylines has tension and a conclusion, but because the stories operate in no small part through flashbacks, the classic plot analysis does not work well in describing the arc of The Joy Luck Club as a whole. However, Jing-mei’s story, which is the most complete and holds together the rest of the book, can be analyzed.
Initial Situation
Jing-mei has some big shoes to fill.
Jing-mei’s mother has just died and Jing-mei needs to fill her mom’s spot in the Joy Luck Club. She’s feeling pretty inadequate for the job, but heads over to the Hsus’ house for the club meeting.
Conflict
The task of completing her mom’s biggest wish falls on Jing-mei’s shoulders.
Suyuan’s most cherished wish was that she could be reunited with her long-lost twin daughters, but she dies before she can fulfill her dream. However, the lost twin daughters have been located and now it’s up to Jing-mei to go to China, meet her sisters, and them about their mother. Oh yeah, she also has to break the news to the twins that their mom is dead.
Complication
Jing-mei’s feels like she doesn’t know her mother.
Jing-mei’s doesn’t think that she’s capable of telling her twin sisters about their mother because Jing-mei isn’t sure she knew their mom herself.
Climax
Jing-mei goes to China to meet her sisters.
In China, Jing-mei realizes she’s more Chinese (and more like her mother) than she thought, so she’s on the path to learning about her own identity while also learning about her mother. In China, one of the things that Jing-mei learns is the meaning of her own name, her sisters’ names, and her mom’s name. All this new information leads to Jing-mei understand that being reunited with her daughters was Suyuan’s "long-cherished wish."
Suspense
How will the encounter between Jing-mei and her twin sisters go?
Jing-mei is super stressed about the coming meeting with her sisters. She fears it will be like a funeral.
Denouement
The sisters hug and cry.
So it turns out that the encounter isn’t awkward at all. It’s more like a reunion than a funeral. The three sisters don’t even say anything, they just start hugging each other, crying, and laughing.
Conclusion
Suyuan’s long-cherished wish has been fulfilled.
The girls have a picture taken of them. Between the three women, they look like their mother. In that sense, by living on through her daughters, Suyuan is reunited with her twin girls when all three daughters meet together at last.

, setting
The Joy Luck Club Setting
Where It All Goes Down
Alternates between San Francisco, California and China
The "present day" of the book takes place in the San Francisco Bay Area, with a trip at the end to Guangzhou and Shanghai, China. The year is roughly somewhere in the 1980’s. The daughters’ youth therefore takes place somewhere in the 1950’s in San Francisco. The mothers, however, engage in a series of flashbacks that take place all over China: Wushi, Kweilin, Tai Lake, etc. Their flashbacks also take place across a number of years, probably ranging from 1920 to around 1940.

The different settings (China vs. America) in which the mothers and daughters grew up and spent their youth determines their values and how they relate to world. Therefore the different settings of their youths leads to much of the confusion and tension between the two generations of women. It is also important that the daughters grew up in the U.S. surrounded for the most part by American culture. The American culture and language are unfamiliar to the mothers, making them seem foreign and awkward to the daughters. For the daughters, their only connection to China is their parents.

, themes
Themes in The Joy Luck Club
Identity.
The stories tell of events which shape the identities of the mothers and daughters and give direction to their lives. Though David Denby is speaking of the movie, his description applies equally well to the novel, "each story centers on a moment of creation or self-destruction in a woman 's life, the moment when her identity becomes fixed forever." The mothers do not question their identities, having come from a stable culture into which their families were integrated. Their daughters, however, are confused about their identities.
Communication between American daughters and Chinese mothers.
The mothers see their duty as encouraging and, if necessary, pushing their daughters to succeed; therefore, they feel they have a right to share in their success (the Chinese view). The daughters see the mothers as trying to live through them and thereby preventing them from developing as separate individuals and from leading independent lives (the American view).
The link of the Chinese mothers and Chinese daughters.
The Chinese mothers form a continuity with their mothers in China, a connection which they want to establish with their American daughters.
Love, loss, and redemption.
Throughout there exists what David Gates calls a "ferocious love between mother and daughter" both in China and in this country. But the women also suffer loss, which ranges from separation to abandonment to rejection, in the mother-daughter relationship and in the male-female relationship. Sometimes the loss is overcome and the love re-established.
Connection of the past and the present.
The mothers ' past lives in China affect their daughters ' lives in this country, just as the daughters ' childhood experiences affect their identities and adult lives.
Power of language.
Without proficiency in a common language, the Chinese mothers and American daughters cannot communicate. St. Clair cannot communicate with his wife, and so he changes her name and her birth date, taking away her identity as a tiger. Lena St. Clair mistranslates for her father and for her mother. Also, words have great power.
Expectation and reality.
The mothers have great hopes for their daughters; their expectations for their daughters include not just success but also freedom. They do not want their daughters ' lives to be determined by a rigid society and convention, as in an arranged marriage, and made unhappy as theirs were. The American reality fulfilled their expectations in unanticipated and unacceptable ways. Another way of expressing this theme is The American Dream and its fulfillment.
Chinese culture versus American culture.
This conflict appears throughout the novel, from the struggles of the mothers and daughters to Lena St. Clair 's Chinese eyes and American appearance and Lindo Jong 's Chinese face and her American face.
Major Themes
The Changing Legacy of Women
Mothers and daughters have a special connection in this book through flesh and spirit. It is as though daughters and mothers share one flesh all their lives, and not just when daughters are in the womb. They take on different roles depending on cultural demands. In China, the mothers are expected to be obedient wives and to never openly challenge authority. In America, the daughters are independent, have the option of divorcing and taking most any job, and come from the baby boomer generation, which often prides itself on challenging authority. When the daughter in the prologue of Queen Mother of the Western Skies looks in the mirror, because she is sitting with one mirror in front of her and one at her back, she sees infinite reflections of her own face. This makes her realize that she is part of one multifaceted spirit that extends forever into past and future generations. While her country of residence, job, marriage, and language may be different from her mother 's, they are still connected irrevocably, as will be the case with her own daughter.
Assimilation and the American Dream
The story of the swan is the ultimate symbol of the American Dream in the novel. The mothers want their daughters to have all the privileges they could not, but are disappointed that this in turn means their daughters will not truly understand them. The American Dream changes between the generations. For the mothers, it is creating a future full of privilege and success. For the daughters, it is the freedom to take their opportunities and do with them as little or as much as they want. The daughters ' Americanness is reflected most strongly in their relationships with men. Ted, Harold, and especially Rich, represent the American part of their wives, which for the mothers seems frighteningly disconnected from Chinese thinking. Suyuan wants Jing-mei to be the perfect American girl like Shirley Temple, but resents how little Jing-mei understands about Chinese culture. As Lindo Jong explains, these are the perils of being "two-faced." Fitting in one place means not fitting in somewhere else, and the challenge for Chinese-American women is to find a balance that honors both cultures.
Architecture and Arrangement
Surroundings and settings represent the state of things in the characters ' lives. The first example of this pattern is the caves of Kweilin. When life is peaceful, they are breathtaking and wondrous, but during wartime they represent terror. While the caves protect the citizens of Kweilin, they make them all the more aware of their confinement and lack of freedom. Ying-ying sees this dichotomy in Lena 's house. Signs of an unhappy marriage are reflected in the fact that the architecture and decoration are pretty but lack function. The irony, of course, is that both husband and wife work in architecture. They have all the skills to build a strong house and a strong marriage, but they cannot seem to use them. The unstable table represents the whole house and whole marriage. Like Harold and Lena 's marriage, it has sentimental value and once seemed like the best table ever built. Now its flaws are all too obvious. Like the luxuries in the Huang household, those in Harold and Lena 's house are just a cover for how things have gone rotten from the inside out. There is similar symbolism in Ted and Rose 's garden. The house again represents marital unhappiness. It is as though when a couple does not address their flaws, the problems seep into their homes. Rose is like the garden she lets go to ruin; she is tired of having her hopes and self-worth pruned back by Ted. She must be like the weeds that creep into the stonework and eventually tear down the house and all it represents.
Love and Marriage
The fact that many of the mothers and daughters have unhappy marriages creates a common ground on which they can relate. But marriage has different meanings for each generation. For the mothers, it is permanent and not always based on love. Especialy in their marriages in China, it is a social necessity that they must secretly undermine in order to be happy. For the daughters, marriage is supposed to be the arena where they can be their true selves. However, like their mothers, they are hard-pressed to find true love or themselves in their marriages; rather, they must break up their marriages to find themselves. The one love that remains constant in the novel is that between mothers and daughters. No matter how strained it is by cultural and generational differences, it is indestructible. Love, like heritage, goes forward and backward through generations of females.
Language As Barrier and Bridge
Reading the novel in English, we can forget that the mothers are speaking in Chinese. This fact shows how unimportant differences in language can be; mothers and daughters express themselves vividly whether in English or Chinese. However, this fact also reminds us how much of the mothers ' intentions are lost to English speakers, including their daughters. They seem uneducated when they speak English, unable to pronunce words, but are really deep reservoirs of knowledge. Many things in Chinese culture have no real English equivalent, such as chunwang chihang and nengkan. These ideas seem foreign to the daughters; they understand them but often consider them specific to their mothers ' generation. Thus language can be a barrier between people. Language can also be a bridge; for instance, Suyuan and Canning fall in love while learning English together, and it is the daughters ' ability to understand Chinese that lets them glean their mothers ' wisdom. In the end, the success of Jing-mei 's journey is evident in language. Jing-mei finally learns the meaning of her own name and her mother 's. She has been the key to fulfilling her mother 's dream all along; her role as the ultimate bridge between the generations is encoded in her very name.
Superstition and Ghosts
Both mothers and daughters believe in spirits and in reading signs, although the daughters can be reluctant to accept what they see. Superstition can make the mothers seem strange and outmoded to their daughters, but it also makes them aware of their deep spiritual inheritance. Mothers see it necessary to teach their daughters superstition, because they think their daughters are naturally blind to the spiritual world. Lena sees ghosts and Rose believes Old Man Chou in her dreams. Rose and Lena both see themselves as having the ability to change their fate by superstition, by chunwang chihan. But superstition also makes them feel helpless; Rose has the premonition that Bing will die but cannot do anything to stop it. In the same way, Lena sees her marriage falling apart but feels helpless to prevent it. In the end, the daughters ' connection to their mothers comes through the ghosts of their ancestors. When she meets her sisters, Jing-mei realizes that she has been connected to her Chinese heritage all along in spirit, even if not in her actions. When Jing-mei and her sisters look at the Polaroid, they see themselves appear like ghosts out of the mist to become the striking image of Suyuan. By the end of the book Jing-mei, like the other daughters, realizes that she is just as much a part of her mother 's spirit as she is of her flesh. Furthermore, she is the only one who can save her mother from becoming a ghost, by learning from her strength and keeping her heritage alive.
Sacrifice and Suffering
Physical sacrifice expresses how a mother and daughter are so close they are like one flesh. The story of An-mei Hsu 's mother is the strongest example of this expression. First, she sacrifices flesh from her arm to honor her own mother, Popo. It is as though the pain is nothing compared to her obligation to her mother. An-mei Hsu 's mother also sacrifices her body to Wu Tsing so that she can have at least some status instead of becoming a beggar. She does this so that An-mei can look up to her. Her suicide, while seemingly selfish, is the ultimate sacrifice she can make for An-mei. By killing herself, she is showing An-mei that being a second-rate concubine, used and disgraced, is no way to live. In dying, she gives An-mei the strength to carve her own path in life. Lindo sacrifices her pride and happiness to keep her parents ' promise to Wu Tsing. Suyuan must sacrifice her daughters, abandoning them in order for them to have a chance at life. All of the mothers make a great sacrifice in leaving China in hopes of finding a better life for their daughters. Like the duck, they must stick their necks out in order to become swans. Once they have settled in America, both mothers and daughters are faced with another form of sacrifice. As Lindo Jong says, one always sacrifices part of oneself by putting on one 's "American face" or one 's "Chinese face." All the women have sacrificed the chance to be "fully" of one culture in order to struggle and revel in the space between cultures. This is the ultimate sacrifice they make for one another.

Strength
Chapter 3
Strength 1: On the day of her wedding, Lindo finally realizes that obeying her parents doesn 't mean forgetting herself. She understands that no matter what she might be forced to do, no one can take away heridentity. Knowing this, and knowing it is a secret, makes her strong and proud, even as she goes out to face what could be the worst day of her life. Then Lindo, who had always been obedient and quiet, took matters into her own hands. She blew out her husband 's end ofthe candle. She was afraid, but not so afraid that it prevented her from doing what she wanted.
Strength 2: Lindo still thinks of herself as the young girl who was forced to marry a man she didn 't like, because that was a defining time in her life. It was the time when she realized that she didn 't have to accept her fate: she could change it if she wanted to. She was expected to live the rest of her life in a small village in China, but instead, she went alone to America.
Chapter 4
Strength 3: Ying-ying is a striking contrast to Lindo. While Lindo found herself, Ying-ying asked to be found. She did not have thestrength to oppose the people in her life who were telling her to sit still and be quiet. Instead, she followed their orders, just wishing someone would save her from them. As an old woman, she recognizes that she gave up her identity very early in her life.
Chapter 6
Strength 4: Lena wants to avoid becoming fearful like her mother, but sometimes she can 't help it. She desperately wants her life to change, but she feels helpless, until she meets her young neighbor. Teresa is effortlessly confident and brave. Lena wants to give her mother strength like Teresa and her mother have, and after her short talk with Teresa, she begins to believe she can do it.
Chapter 8
Strength 5: June thinks she is being strong and independent when she opposes her mother, but as an adult, she seems to believe that she was just being defiant. She did not want her mother to dominate her, so she tried to find her own identity. But since heridentity consisted of her arguing with her mother and ruining her own pursuits (she was so mad at her mother that she never learned to play the piano), she was always unhappy. Now she seems to understand that being strong does not always mean being stubborn.
Chapter 9
Strength 6: Lena believes she has the power to kill someone with her mind, but she is not strong enough to tell Harold that she doesn 't want ice cream. She understands her own strengths perfectly within her mind, but cannot explain them to anyone else. She often thinks her way into unhappiness: rather than simply deciding that Harold is too obsessed with money, she worries about what she specifically wants from him. It is partly this confusion that keeps her too weak to leave Harold.
Chapter 11
Strength 7: Rose always felt inferior to Ted, and let him push her around. So she is immensely proud of herself when she finally stands up to him, particularly because it is over something so important. He is trying to push her out of the house, forget she exists, and replace her with another woman. Rose suddenly realizes that she will not accept that. She loves the house, and is willing to fight for it, even though she is afraid of Ted. When she sees how powerful her words are, she feels even stronger.
Chapter 13
Strength 8: An-mei, though filled with sorrow, learns to findstrength in her mother 's death. She believes what her mother told her before she died: she was dying to give An-mei a stronger spirit than her own. An-mei stands up to Second Wife and "learns to shout." She sees that her mother 's suicide was an act of greatstrength of will: she gave up everything so her children could have a better life than she did.
Chapter 14
Strength 9: Ying-ying willingly gives up her chi, her spirit, because she believes it is what brought her so much pain in the first place. She becomes, she says, like a ghost, who never objects or even lets her opinion be known. In order to avoid sadness, she decides to feel nothing at all. She marries Clifford because he is nice to her and she knows he will be a good husband. She asks for nothing from life, and seems to want nothing.
Chapter 16
Strength 10: Though June at first has no self-confidence in China, she begins to feel more comfortable. She seems to have conquered the pain of her mother 's death, the frustration at never having known her, by meeting her mother 's other daughters. She feels that she has fulfilled her mother 's greatest wish, and has thus found her own kind of reconciliation with her mother.

, symbols
Since its publication in 1989, Amy Tan 's "The Joy Luck Club" has received a considerable amount of critical acclaim. The novel concentrates on the lives of the members of four Chinese-American families. The novel 's sixteen chapters are told from the various perspectives of the mothers and daughters who make up the four families, all of whom join together to form "the Joy Luck Club." The novel is predominately about the trials, tribulations, and joys of immigrant life in America and the discrepancies between the generations of mothers and daughters. Tan utilizes various symbols throughout the novel that represent significant ideas or concepts that relate to these themes.

The novel is broken up into vignettes told by the various women and their daughters. In one such vignette, told by Jing-mei and entitled "Best Quality," Jing-mei describes the jade pendant her mother, Suyuan, gave her. When Jing-mei first inherits the pendant, which her mother calls her "life 's importance," she feels that the unfashionable piece of jewelry simply supports her idea that the differences between her mother, who identifies with the Chinese culture, and herself as she predominately aligns herself with the American culture. Although the pendant initially represents the generational and cultural gap between Jing-mei and her mother, after Suyan 's death, Jing-mei begins to see the pendant in a different light. Recognizing that her mother cherished the pendant and ultimately handed it over to her daughter, Jing-mei associates the piece with her mother 's love. Furthermore, as Jing-mei matures, she begins to understand her mother. Whereas she previously believed her mother to be foolishly superstitious and critical, she begins to appreciate the same characteristics her mother displayed as representations of her mother 's maternal love and prudence.

Lindo Jong 's red marital candle is another symbol Tan uses in the novel. In the Chinese culture, when a man and wife are united through marriage, they customarily light a candle with a wick at each end. The bride 's name is carved on one end and the groom 's name is on the other. Chinese culture suggests that if the candle burns all night and neither burns out, the marriage will be a success. Although the candle symbolizes the ultimate success of the marriage, it also serves as a symbol of traditional Chinese culture. The candle, much like Jing-mei 's jade pendant, represents the traditional Chinese customs. While the pendant is symbolic of an inherited culture, the candle demonstrates the Chinese beliefs about marriage.

Lindo, however, is rather uncertain about her own marriage. She recognizes that Chinese traditional and culture will ultimately prevail and that should she marry, she will become essentially subservient to her husband. However, she also understands that as a part of a Chinese family, she has a responsibility and obligation to her parents to uphold the agreement that they presumably made with her future husband 's family.

When Lindo secretly blows out her husband 's side of the candle, she basically takes control of her own fate in a passive-aggressive manner. Her decision to blow out the candle, regardless of superstition frees her from her potentially unhappy marriage. Furthermore, it maintains her family 's reputation and her own status within their family. In this context, then, Lindo 's marital candle is also symbolic of her control over her own fate, destiny, and life. Lindo 's quiet rebellion allows her to maintain her familial ties while forgoing a potentially unfulfilling life with her would-be husband.

A symbol used by Tan that does not deal directly with Chinese custom or tradition, however, is evident in Lena 's story, "Rice Husband," which focuses on her tumultuous marriage. The vase in her home symbolizes this relationship throughout the vignette. According to her story, Lena recognized that the table where she placed the vase was unstable (built by her husband, Harold, when he first began to study design); however, despite this knowledge, she placed the vase here with no regard for its safety. Similarly, Lena 's marriage faces the threat of crashing down and breaking into tiny pieces. Unfortunately, Lena 's inaction in the case of the vase is also echoed in her inaction when it comes to her marriage. Although she recognizes the fact that her relationship with Harold is in danger, she does nothing to attempt to fix the situation.

Evidently, these various symbols are used in "the Joy Luck Club" to emphasize the importance of cultural traditions for Chinese families, and particularly for Chinese-American immigrants. These individuals essentially straddle the blurry line between Chinese culture and American culture. As a result, older generations (in this case the mothers), typically hope to preserve the Chinese culture and values for the younger generations who live in an extremely different environment and culture.
Imagery
Food.
Food expresses love. June cooks a dish her father likes after her mother 's death to comfort him. It also shows relationships, like the competition in cooking among the mothers. Waverly uses this competition to manipulate her mother into inviting Rich to dinner; she arranges to eat at Auntie Suyuan 's house. Food also reveals character. Waverly selfishly takes the best crabs for her daughter, Rich, and herself; June considerately takes the worst crab so her mother won 't get it. Food makes cultural statements; the first meal Jing-mei has in China with her relatives is American fast food. Food also affirms life, as the Joy Luck meals at Kweilin. And it marks significant events--Lindo meets her husband at New Year when fish are being caught and cooked, and afterward she sees him at red egg ceremonies. When she arrives at her future husband 's home, she is sent to the kitchen, a mark of her low status; another mark of her subordination is her cooking to please her husband and mother-in-law. An-mei almost dies after boiling soup spills on her neck.
Clothing.
Clothing expresses cultural identity and clashes as well as hides identity. Suyuan brings expensive silk dresses from China, then has to wear hand-me-down Western clothes which are too big. As an old lady, she dresses strangely and wears colors which clash. In a photograph taken when Ying-ying arrives in this country, she is wearing a Chinese dress with a Western jacket which is too big. On the boat to Tientsin, An-mei is surprised at her mother 's sudden appearance in Western dress and is thrilled at her own new dress; the change to Western clothing represents both the start of a new life and estrangement from Chinese tradition.
Dreams.
Dreams allow us to move between the conscious level and the unconscious level, to express hidden feelings. June dreams of telling her sisters of her mother 's death and being rejected. A dream brings release in another sense; Lindo makes up a dream to escape her marriage without dishonoring her family.
Wind and directions.
Waverly thinks of wind in her relationship with her mother and in her chess playing. Because "the north wind had blown luck and my husband my way," Ying-ying keeps the window open to blow "the spirit and heart" of her womanizing husband back; instead the north wind blows him "past my bedroom and out the back door" (p. 281).

The Swan and the Swan Feather
So the woman bought a swan who used to be a duck – also known as "a creature that became more than what was hoped for." The swan gets pulled away by immigration officials, and the old lady is left only with a swan feather that she hopes to one day give to her daughter. What does this all mean? Well, we would argue that Tan is making a really strong case for the swan/swan feather to represent all the best wishes and hope for a better life in the new world. Obviously the woman has hopes for her daughter (for her worth not to be "measured by the loudness of her husband’s belch" – yikes), but what the duck/swan represents is something greater than hope, something that exceeds the wildest imagination.
The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates
In the novel, The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates is a Chinese book detailing all of the dangers that could befall a child. So the book symbolizes a mother’s desire to protect her children against any and all dangers they face. The mother in the parable starting off Part II is worried that her daughter will fall while bike riding. Later, we learn that An-mei reads The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates in hope of protecting her children from all possible hazards. But, by identifying the dangers, does it help a mother save her children, or does it make her paranoid, possibly bringing about the mother’s worst fears?

This parable also points out that there are perils that children can’t always see, so you have to trust their mother, as exemplified by the fact that The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates is in Chinese, so the daughter can’t read it.
Queen Mother of the Western Skies
The Queen Mother of the Western Skies appears in the parable that is the prologue to the fourth part of the novel. In this parable, a grandmother thinks that her baby granddaughter must be the Queen Mother of the Western Skies, a mother reincarnated many times over and therefore holding much wisdom about life. From the Queen Mother/baby granddaughter, the grandmother realizes that she has lived an aspect of her own life wrongly, and passed on that same false wisdom to her daughter. This shows that mothers aren’t always right in what they teach their daughters. It also implies that wisdom can come from age and learning over your lifetime, but can also be found in youth.
Food
The women of the Joy Luck Club feast every week in order to forget their sorrow. Waverly describes cooking as "how my mother expressed her love, her pride, her power, her proof that she knew more than Auntie Su." Similarly, Jing-mei says that Chinese mothers show their love "not through hugs and kisses but with stern offerings of steamed dumplings, duck’s gizzards, and crab." Basic takeaway here? Food = love. Food = hope. Food = happiness.
The Red Candle
The red candle with two ends for lighting (one representing Lindo and one representing her husband) is a symbol of marriage in China, "[…] a marriage bond that was worth more than a Catholic promise not to divorce." The marriage bond can’t be broken by a divorce or by death; a widow could not remarry. If the two ends of the candle remained burning during the entire marriage night, the marriage was bond was complete. That’s why there was supposed to be a servant guarding the candle all night. But Lindo blew the candle out, asserting herself for the first time, and deciding for herself that she was not permanently married. When Lindo later revealed to her mother-in-law that the candle went out, that was another indicator to Huang Taitai that the marriage wasn’t a true one.
Marble End Table/Black Vase
This is perhaps the most blatant metaphor ever. There is a poorly designed (by Harold) marble end table in Lena’s guest bedroom with a black vase on it. The table starts to tip over if you barely touch it – it’s destined to fall. In fact, it does fall, and the vase breaks. Lena says she knew it was going to happen. Her mother asks why she didn’t do anything to prevent it.

So this table falling and vase is a metaphor for…Lena 's marriage. The marriage is the vase. It’s fragile, but also sitting on a really rickety foundation – the table designed by Harold (a.k.a. the foundation of their marriage, which is the idea of equality and balance sheets, also designed by Harold). So when the foundation gets the slightest nudge, the marriage shatters. Notice that the table falls and the vase breaks just as Lena starts questioning the foundation of their marriage: "We need to think of what our marriage is really based on…not this balance sheet, who owes who what." So that’s the nudge to the foundation. Lena can see that their marriage is heading to disaster. The question is: will she do anything to prevent it?
The Jade Pendant, Jing-mei’s "Life’s Importance"
The green jade pendant was a gift from Suyuan to her daughter, which Suyuan called Jing-mei’s "life importance." If you’re thinking, "What on earth does that mean?" then you’re not alone, Jing-mei is wondering the same thing. The pendant doesn 't necessarily have just one meaning.

Suyuan gives the pendant to her daughter at a point when Jing-mei is feeling terrible about herself. Waverly has just humiliated Jing-mei in over dinner in front of their families, and top it all off, Jing-mei clearly doesn’t know a good crab when she sees one (gasp!). What this boils down to is that Jing-mei doesn’t have a strong eye for quality. So when she’s feeling bad about herself, and thinking that Waverly is better than her, it’s likely that she just can’t recognize her own value. This indicates that the pendant has something to do with Jing-mei’s self-worth, and clearly a lot to do with her life’s importance.

Another hint that the pendant has something to do with Jing-mei’s value is that she meets another guy who’s wearing a similar pendant. He says, "she [his mom] gave it to me after I got divorced. I guess my mother’s telling me I’m still worth something."

Suyuan also says that the pendant’s jade isn’t of very good quality, "This is young jade. It is very light color now, but if you wear it every day it will become more green." The jade could symbolize Jing-mei herself. She is still young and doesn’t have a good sense of her personal worth. But if she keeps acknowledging her value, she will improve with time because she has the ability to change. This is in contrast to Waverly, who is like a crab, "Always walking sideways, moving crooked. You [Jing-me] can make your legs go the other way." So Jing-mei has the ability to change and thus improve herself, whereas Waverly not so much.

Also on the note of changing, we know that the color of the jade will change and deepen over time. Well other things change too, like Jing-mei’s perception and understanding of the pendant. At first she sees it as a tacky necklace which she hides in her jewelry box. But after her mother dies, Jing-mei starts to wear it. It no longer is just an ugly necklace; now it reminds her of Suyuan. As Jing-mei seeks to find out what on earth this pendant is supposed to mean, she’s also seeking to grasp her own life’s importance, and trying to understand her mother. As Jing-mei learns more about herself and her mother, the meaning the pendant has for her deepens, just as the color of the jade will deepen.

Can we possibly gather anything more from this darn pendant? The answer is yes. We also think that Suyuan intended it to serve as a kind of connection between herself and her daughter. Suyuan says to Jing-mei, "See, I wore this on my skin, so when you put it on your skin, then you know my meaning." Jing-mei doesn’t begin to understand that her mom really loved her until after Suyuan 's death – coincidentally also the point when Jing-mei started wearing the pedant every day.

, personal opinion.