Joy Luck Club

Blogging fun… better late than never!: Part II

In a short foreword (again), I am fully aware that this blog is incredibly late in the game and, due to the fact that my views are presented in an untimely manner, will most likely have little effect on our book talk considering it is in roughly 9 hours. Nevertheless, for the principle of the matter (and incredibly necessary grade), the following is my section 2 blog.
Section 2 blog – “Do you think characters are restricted by the past? How does the past happiness/unhappiness influence the future happiness/unhappiness?”:

To start off, I would like to say that I strongly dislike this question. The idea that anyone could ever be uninfluenced by their past seems entirely ridiculous. To be uninfluenced by one’s past is to try to both rewrite your history and rewrite yourself. It is an impossible thing to do, whether intentional or not. ANYWAY, I feel that the characters are all affected differently by their past. While is each is strongly influenced by it, whether they allow it to put a negative or positive spin on their life is up to their own character. Waverly Jong is the best example of a woman who allows her past experiences to haunt her. As a child, Waverly was a prodigal chess player. After quickly picking up the enigmatic sport of reason, she soon became a local hero, winning tournaments and trophies galore. All of this winning, though, goes straight to her head and her mother’s pride spills over into bad parenting and she allows Waverly to become very egocentric. One day, her mother’s pride becomes to much her to bare and Waverly is publicly very rude to her, causing her mother to lose respect for her and stop supporting her chess playing. Without her mother behind her, Waverly quickly loses her strength at the game and soon falls off of the prodigal radar of the nation. Later in life, after finally finding a man she loves who loves her back, Waverly allows her mother’s lack of support to once again damage her strength. As she overthinks everything, Waverly soon finds herself no longer loving her adored fiancée, all because she believes her mother is once again withholding support. It is only once Waverly actually addresses the topic with her mother that she finds her to both appreciate the man and secretly have guessed at their betrothal.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, Rose Hsu does not allow her past unhappiness to influence her future. Instead, she combines it with some healthy advice from her mother to further benefit her own life. In Rose Hsu’s life, unhappiness is represented through her ability to sleep. When Rose is unable to sleep, she is in a bad place in her life. Following her chinese beliefs and those of her family, whenever Rose sleeps, it means she is visiting Old Mr. Chou. As a child, when she was unhappy, she could never fall asleep because she would have nightmares about Mr. Chou chasing her out of his house, the sanctuary of slumber. In those dreams, her mother often worked with Old Mr. Chou against her, chasing her through his garden and pointing her out to him. As an adult, Rose’s story is revolving around her imminent divorce from her husband. Her mother is frustrated with her because Rose refuses to open up about the relationship to her. When finally served with the divorce papers, Rose avoids them and attempts to replace her husband with happiness. She tries to do this by taking sleeping pills, representing illegimate joy, for 4 days. She would just wake up to use the bathroom and eat, then take more pills and just sleep. The sleep is devoid of any dreams, meaning she never sees Mr. Chou and therefore can never truly experience anything other than the drug induced void. Finally, after three days, her mother calls on the phone and wakes her up. Through some quick advice, she helps instill the necessary courage in Rose for her to stand up to her soon – to – be – ex – husband. After finally asserting herself for the first time in both her relationship and, most likely, her life, Rose is finally able to get some real sleep. This time, though, when she dreams of Old Mr. Chou, he welcomes her into his home with the help of Rose’s loving mother. This entire story shows how Rose is able to take a negative experience in her youth and, through the help of her mother, take away something positive.