Analysis, Week 14, The Joy Luck Club

Life is not always what it seems.

In the book, The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tran, there are four mothers born and raised in China, and later immigrated to San Francisco with their husbands and had daughters. The book contains stories from the mothers and daughters growing up and then talks about their relationships once the daughters became adults. The daughter’s views of what their mothers wanted for and from them were very different than what the mothers want for their daughters At the of the book the daughters finally see what their mothers have been trying to show and tell them for all of their lives.

There are many literary devises used throughout this book, however I am going to focus on tragedy and symbol.

Tragedy is shown in the following quote. “But today I realize I’ve never really known what is means to be Chinese. I am thirty-six years old. My mother is dead and I am on a train, carrying with me her dreams of coming home. I am going to China.” (268) This is a very meaningful quote to me, the character Jing-Mei, has a realization that she is not who she thought she was and now that her mother has died. Now, she is taking a journey with her father to find the two daughters her mother left on the side of the road in Kweilin and was never able to find while she was alive. Sometimes in life we have a picture in our mind about who we are, how we see our self and how others see you, even though you may think you know who you are, with a single event in your life, your whole world can change and you can find yourself lost, confused, and with a lot of unanswered questions. I have felt this way in life and in the previous quote it reflects that Jing-Mei feels the same way.

Symbol is another literary devise used in this book. “Together we look like our mother. Her same eyes, her same mouth, open in surprise to see, at last, her long-cherished wish.”(288) Jing Mei and her twin sisters are three adult children, who share the same mother, Suyuan Woo. Jing-Mei grew up in America with her mother that she did not always see eye to eye with and did not appreciate her, and now regrets. Her twin sisters grew up in China with a mother, who raised them, but also honored Suyuan Woo as their mother. The only thing these two daughters had of their mother was a picture. However, once they are together they see that they share the same facial features as their mother, a symbol that they share a special bond as sisters.

It is very true, Life is not always what is seems, but we have to make the best of it and try to take the challenges on head on, go with the flow and make the best of it. It might just turn out better than we had planned.

Citied Work

The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tran, Penguin Books 2006