For such a highly recommended novel, this plot seemed pretty commonplace but I suppose it's unclear whether the novel was always vanilla or if it were like a prototype for this particular kind of novel. The novel begins after the death of the founding member of the Joy Luck Club, a group of women and their families who came together, essentially, to hide from the pains of Chinese society during the 1930's and '40's. She bequeathed her corner of the mahjong table to her daughter and this mother-daughter interaction opens up an analysis of the relationships of all four daughters and mothers. This technique of direct comparison between Chinese-born mother and American-born daughter is effective in displaying some common elements of relationships such as these. Some of these elements included a refusal of old Chinese allegories and a dogmatic attitude toward the culture the characters, especially the mothers they were observed in.
The most clear theme to me was the idea that there is always something to be learned from your peers. The daughters learned from their mothers which one would expect anyway but the mothers also learned some important lessons in individuality and amenability.
The tone of the book was much more grave than the title would have led me to believe. I suspected lessons taught through comedic and awkward experiences but instead it was taught through tragic recountals. " Because I was promised to the Huangs' son for marriage, my own family began treating me as if I belonged to somebody else." This excerpt was provided by one of the mothers who recounted her childhood in a small village. " She had come here in 1949 after losing everything in China: her mother and father, her family home, her first husband, and two daughters, twin baby girls." The protagonist explained the effects of the Japanese invasion of China on her mother's life incredibly tristfully. It was comparable to the image of the napalmed girl in Vietnam or the Price family exodus from the village after the death of Ruth. " You don't even know little percent of me! How can you be me?" Family dysfunction runs rampant through these characters plots. The language barrier between Chinese-preferring mothers and English-preferring daughters was only an additional quandary to incite argument between factions.
The edition of book I am reading is the Penguin Books 2006 print in paperback. This section lends itself to numbering:
Literary Elements
1. Pathos is used on page 99: " Embarrass you be my daughter?" Her voice was cracking with anger." The pain of that assumption bares through to anybody with parents. It makes it increasingly obvious that one of Tan's other messages was that the relationships in Chinese-American families have their own qualities that only made the emotional health of the family more distant.
2. Parallelism was used on page 115: " I saw a girl complaining that the pain of not being seen was unbearable. I saw the mother lying in bed in her long flowing robes." The comparison between mother and daughter in this excerpt was demonstrative of the fault that could be found within the perceptions of either party.
3. Motif was also used on page 115: " 'Then you must die the death of a thousand cuts. It is the only way to save you." The death by a thousand cuts was repeated several times, seemingly with the intention of portraying the message that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. The painful experiences these women dealt with were suggested to be strengthening, like a bone that breaks and is stronger afterwards(not medical advice).
4. Metaphor was used on page 40: "Not know your own mother? How can you say? Your mother is in your bones." This sentimental idea maybe one of the most prehistoric identities a person can have. The idea that although her mother was dead, she had raised her and gotten into her body with the food she fed her daughter and ideas she had instilled.
5. Symbolism was used on page 77: " And I turned around so I could find the Moon Lady and tell her my secret wish." The Moon Lady was symbolic of the hope that this mother had felt since she was a child for a different life in which she were more in control of and more emotionally in touch with. Essentially, all the characters felt this way, whether they were the mothers who sought to redefine themselves by individuality they hoped to find in America, or the daughters who hoped to understand themselves without the distancing weight of their mothers' expectations.
6. Imagery was used on page 77 also: " In the dark water, I could see the full moon, a moon so warm and big it looked like the sun." This quote was directly before the Moon Lady sentence. In this, it serves as an example of the pattern Tan created by being descriptive about significant objects that would be symbolic.
7. Foil was used on page 203: " It was amazing how Waverly still sounded the way she did twenty-five years ago, when we were ten and she had announced to me in that same voice, 'You aren't a genius like me." Jing-Mei, the protagonist, was never the prodigy her mother had hoped for her to be. Waverly was a smug chess child prodigy and a smug genius can make anybody look better.
8. Colloquialism could be found sprinkled throughout the entire text. This was one of the most common: " Aii-ya!" Whether the interjection was directly significant to the plot or not was not as important as the fact that it was used at all. The phrase means something along the lines of " My God!" The pure emotion that interjections can carry due to their lack of restraint speak to the fact that although the parents do their best to assimilate with American society, including English, they still feel in accordance Chinese values.
9. One cliché was introduced on page 96: " A small weekend crowd of Chinese people and tourists would gather as I played and defeated my opponents one by one." It is a common cliché to see a small child playing chess and beating his/her opponents, especially old men. I believe this cliché was included so that Tan could make the reader understand that some of what most people understand about "tiger parents" is true.
10. Irony was included on page 137: " So that's how I discovered that Old Chong's eyes were too slow to keep up with the notes I was playing." The irony of this excerpt is not only that the piano teacher doesn't see her mistakes, but that she abuses this disability while her mother has agreed to clean the house for him in exchange for the lessons. This further demonstrates the misinterpretation of the other's intentions.
Characterization
One example of direct characterization is when Lindo Jong describes the boy she was forced to marry when she was young. She says he was scared like a boy who had never grown up. Another example is when Lena St. Clair falls in love with her co-worker. Direct characterization is used to describe characters who are only being used as means to develop the other characters. Indirect characterization is used at many times, especially during description of the mothers and daughters when dealing with dogmatic attitudes almost all of them had. It is also used to tastefully mention minor details about peripheral characters.
Diction was only changed when the mothers were speaking or being spoken of because there would be Chinese words and ideas included. This also altered syntax by making it a little more curt for the foreign message to be comprehensible.
Although there was no true protagonist, Jing Mei was probably the most important. She was dynamic in her metamorphosis from a girl who resented what her mother was trying to make of her to the esteemed daughter who only wished she could have understood her mother before she died. She was flat though because other characters occupied different aspects of the personality.
"And I knew by the wonder in his voice that he had no idea what the pendant really meant." This quote illustrates the appreciation Jing-Mei has found by the end of the book. She ultimately understands the knowledge that her mother passed on to her, symbolized by the jade pendant mentioned in the excerpt. She was also well-described by indirect characterization, which is the way most of us learn about other people anyway.
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