The Joy Luck Club

1. Plot Summary:

The novel begins when Suyuan Woo just passed away.  She is an elderly Chinese woman who grew up in China and later moved to the states after she remarried.  Suyuan is the founder of The Joy Luck Club, this is where a few close friends get together to eat, drink, and gamble.  It began during the war to lift spirits.  Suyuan was then married and had twin daughters.  Her husband died in the war and she had to abandon her daughters in hopes that someone would save them.  She then remarried and moved to the states where she had another daughter, June. The one wish Suyuan had was to find her lost daughters and she had not fulfilled this in her life.  Once June’s mother passed she took her mothers place in The Joy Luck Club, and in the first meeting found out that her twin sisters were found alive and still lived in China.  June’s aunties, the women in The Joy Luck Club, saved money to give to June so she could fulfill her mothers dream.  June struggles with coming to terms with this task because she wants to tell her sisters all about their mother but feels that she never really knew her mother herself. The book has sixteen chapters and each of the women and their daughters have a chapter dedicated to themselves where it goes more in depth about their personal life and struggles.  In the end June goes to China and finds her sisters and feels like she grew closer to her mother in the process.

2. Theme:

The major theme of The Joy Luck Club is how to cope with the cultural differences, especially with in their own families. The elder women in the novel were all raised very differently then they raised their children.  Because of this is caused tension in the mother daughter relationships.  In the Chinese culture it is extremely important to respect and obey your elders and this is how the older women were raised, and then they have their daughters that they believe are not respectful enough and in a sense, to American.  On the contrary, the daughters view their mothers as to traditional and a little up tight. The four mothers want their children to have, how Lindo puts it, “American circumstances and Chinese character.” By this she is saying how she favors the American opportunities, especially the role of women, but wishes her daughter would hold the Chinese value of respect and honesty.

3. Tone:

Amy Tan’s tone for the novel is reflective.  In each chapter the different characters take time to look back on their life and see what they wish they could change and what they wouldn’t change for the world.

a.       “When I was in love with Marvin, he was nearly perfect…”

b.      "I was no longer scared. I could see what was inside me."

c.       "Even though I was young, I could see the pain of the flesh and the worth of the pain."

4. Literary Techniques:

 Imagery: She uses descriptive sentences and makes you really connect with the characters.

            Style: Tan’s style is unique because of the way she structures the novel. Each paragraph has a different narrator and focuses on the current narrator’s life.

            Metaphor: She uses metaphors through out the novel, it is a phrase that is applied to something it is not literally talking about.

                        Ex: “We were a city of leftovers mixed together.”

            Simile: To compare two things using like or as.  She brings interest to her writing by using this.

                        Ex: “My heart felt like crickets scratching to get out of a cage.”

            Personification: Where you give human characteristics to a nonhuman thing.  Tan uses this frequently to describe the many different places in the novel.

                        Ex: “The hills would suddenly become monstrous elephants marching toward me.”