Joy Luck Club

Explore the ways in which Amy Tan portrays mother-daughter relationships. You may focus on one family to illustrate central themes in the novel.

In the ‘Joy Luck Club’, Amy Tan explores the central themes in the novel. The central themes in this novel are the lack of communication between the mothers and daughters, cultural differences (between China and America), mothers’ critical (attitudes and expectations for daughters) and finally the change in relationships, (increased understandings). Throughout the novel there is always a great sense of tradition, with this comes many beliefs and superstitions. Mothers in each case always bring these superstitions and beliefs around.

One of the main themes in this novel is communication. There is a great lack of communication in nearly every single account. With this lack of communication between mother and daughter comes a great deal of misunderstandings. Since most of the mothers do not know English they cannot communicate with their husbands and daughters or sons easily. Therefore they cannot grasp the full meaning of what the mother is trying to say and people end up saying things for them.

I have noticed a communication problem in many of the stories. I have chosen to talk ab

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When they are talking about it Lindo implies that she wants to go back around that time too, she tries to show that she wants to go too.

The last theme that I can see that is constant throughout the whole book is the change in relationships between the mothers and daughters.

The lack of communication is also due to the difference in language, Chinese and English. Also she wants to regain all those lost years with her mother. Waverly has said something that she has thought about for a long time however her mother interprets it wrongly which makes the situation worse. Waverly lost sight of her original goal: persuading Lindo to give her some breathing room. Here their relationships progresses and they begin to understand each other. She felt that Lindo invaded her sphere by hovering over her while she practiced chess. Waverly wanted chess to be her domain. ” This shows that Lindo and Waverly do not understand each other. Rory, Waverly’s hair stylist, comments that she and Waverly look alike, Lindo wears her Chinese face. When she visited China, she wore Chinese clothing and used local currency, but the merchants and people knew that she was American. Most of the mothers have high expectations for their daughters. Also their cultural beliefs are different, since they were brought up in different environments.

In conclusion you can say that al these themes are related and this is what all the stories evolve around

Approximate Word count = 1266
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

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