Many Misconceptions and Delusions
Conflicts play a crucial role in novels. Without conflict, novels would
be uninteresting and very dull. Conflicts are seen in many different forms,
as internal conflicts, when a character must deal with private problems, and
external conflicts, when a character must deal with problems originating from an external source, like another person or society in general. Some common conflicts seen in other novels are person versus society, as in The Scarlet Letter when Hester is forced to face her mistake of adultery due to the
obsession of the unforgiving town. An example of an internal conflict is
present within Animal Dreams, when Cody must decide where she belongs and must also deal with the pain of her lost baby. These types of conflicts and
more are visible within the novel entitled The Joy Luck Club written by Amy
Tan. Three prominent conflicts seen in The Joy Luck Club are between Waverly and Lindo, Lindo and Suyuan, and between June and Waverly.
The first prominent conflict within this novel deals with Waverly and her
mother Lindo. Waverly feels as though her mother is attempting to ruin her
life by causing her to "see black where there once was white" (Tan 186).
Lindo, Waverly believes, is attempting to influence her daughter for the
worse. She does not want to be influenced by her mother's opinions, her
criticisms of everything that she loves, yet Waverly fears that even if she
"recognized her sneak attack, [she] was afraid that some unseen speck of
truth would fly into [her] eye, blur what [she] was seeing and transform
[it]" (Tan 181) into the thing that her mother saw, into something full
of faults, something that is not good enough for her. Waverly resents this,
yet Lindo believes that it is for Waverly's own good. She does not want
Waverly to accept something just because it was a gift, like the fur jacke...