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.

Blogging fun… better late than never!

In a short foreword, 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 10 hours. Nevertheless, for the principle of the matter (and incredibly necessary grade), the following is my section 1 blog.

Section 1 blog – “How are women depicted in contemporary fiction and media? During your reading of the novel, comment on the ways in which women are being portrayed. Consider relationship, experiences, situations, etc.”:

In Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, women are shown in all shapes, sizes, and situations. The story, while confusingly organized, shows the parallel lives of two generations: the lives of the mothers and the lives of their daughters. Originally frustrating, I began to understand and, dare I say it, appreciate Tan’s disjointed plot line when I compared her writing style to the characterization and motifs throughout the novel. The resounding motif throughout the book is one of confusion. As each woman is shown during her childhood, the confusion of youth and coming into the world is constantly apparent. Each character seems to misunderstand both what is around them and how they should deal with it. Whether it is the one girl learning to win every chess match yet lose her relationship with her mother, or the other having trouble knowing who to trust, her grandmother who raised her or her biological mother who abadoned her. More often than not, it appears to me that this confusion is only worsened by their mother’s attempts to clear it up. This book is a solid dialogue on the relationship between a mother and daughter. I find it very interesting that everytime the mothers depicted attempt to help their daughters, they only worsen both the situation and their relationship. After reading the short biography of the author (located on the back flap of the book) and noticing the many similarities between Amy Tan and her characters’ lives, I wonder if this is semi – autobiographical in a sense. She depicts the chinese mother as a stubborn woman, hell bent on raising her child the same way she herself was raised. This may be Amy Tan’s attempt at venting her own frustration, yet also bridled admiration, toward her mother. I say admiration because many of the mothers, while confusing and often flat out rude, seem to have a hidden wealth of wisdom and apparent coolness under pressure. Often, when faced by trouble, the multiple characters have a common sense of jealousy toward their mothers for having this trait.

This book is an interesting excursion into the mind of a woman. As a recipient of both an x and y chromosome, it intrigues me to have an in depth view of the thought process of women. I also think it is interesting to see the generational and cultural rifts between the mothers and daughters. This is seen because the mothers are all from China, raised traditionally according to their background while the daughters are all raised in California, somewhere between Oakland and San Francisco. The apparent difference between the mothers and daughters is consistently based around their ability to hold a relationship. In today’s day and age, the American divorce rate is roughly at 50% while the Chinese divorce rate remains around 20%. This raw data immediatley puts the lives of these women into context. For all the women in the story who grow up in the US, marry American men and live American lives, divorce is either a possibility, a current reality, or a thing in their past. For all the older Chinese mothers, though, the only reason the women are alone is because they may have out lived their husband. This motif of failing American relationships shows the difference of the cultures in the eyes of Amy Tan.