Embedded Files
By Amy Tan
Joy Luck Club character analysis
Made by Joshua Kartawinata Period 1 Womens Lit.
Suyuan Woo - She was the first mother to start the Joy Luck Club in China and in America. During the present time in the movie, she is dead. But she was a mother to 3 children, 2 of them being twins that she left behind during the Sino-Japanese War. Due to threats being made by the Japanese invaders during the war, she was forced to abandoned the newborn children. She later moved to America to start a new life.
Relationships and analysis
During the war, she shows a lot of strength and determination, especially when she is forced to abandon her kids. She eventually travels to America to start a new life. In which she has Jing-Mei(June). Their relationship was very bittersweet, as Suyuan believed that June was capable of having a better life than her. She enrolls June to piano lessons against her own will. When June finds out about the children, she could never forgive her. Suyuan has a wish to meet the daughters she had been forced to abandoned. She faced a lot of hardship in her life, along with lost a lot of hope when she had to abandon her twins. Nonetheless, she transfers her "hope" to June. June later fulfills her wish by going to meet them, which shows she has a newfound respect towards her mother and recognizing how much her mother truly loved her.
Lindo Jong - Lindo is one of the mothers within the Joy Luck Club, and Suyuan's rival and best friend.Lindo was raised in China by a her mother and her family but forced into an arranged marriage by a wealthy family. Her mother in law mistreated her and her husband was very obnoxious. She has a metaphor "wind's invisible strength" in which she uses this to get out of her marriage and move to America. She has a daughter named Waverly and also acts as a mother figure towards June, even helping to send a letter to the twins.
Relationships and analysis
Lindo's relationship with Waverly is seen to be very distant. She pushed Waverly to become better and to succeed, as she believes in success through achievement and merit. This is shown when she forced Waverly to play chess. Lindo also is very intelligent but due to the language barrier, Waverly often misintereprets her for being spiteful and ignorant. Despite this, she really cares for Waverly and wants what she could not have during her childhood. She solved this problem by talking to Waverly about how she truly feels and how she wants her to be happy with Rich (Waverly's husband). In the end, she was able to communicate to her daughter and make sure Waverly knows just how proud she is, which was her way of justifying why she pushed Waverly to succeed.
An-Mei Hsu - An-Mei Hsu is another mother within the Joy Luck Club that we see in the beginning. She has a daughter named Rose, and lived in China with her mother. She believes in the bond between a mother and her daughter, as she chose to move in with her mom when she married an a wealthy man. She moved America and took her beliefs and taught her daughter, Rose.
Relationships and Analysis
An-Mei was taught to suppress her emotions and to make sure no one sees her cry. As her saw her mother show immense determination when she fed An-Mei's grandmother her own blood, which was seen as the highest honor. An-Mei with her mother in a new house with a man who had 2 other wives and concubines. Because of this An-Mei's mother was not able to speak up, and express her discomfort with her husband. As a result, she killed herself in order to give An-Mei a better life. She learns from this and learned how to speak up and express her feelings when she is in discomfort. This was seen as a defining moment of character, as she is considered one of the more reserved and quieter mother that we see in the club meeting. Nonetheless, her daughter Rose married a
Ying Ying St Clair - Ying Ying is considered a broken woman, as she had to endure probably one of the most tragic stories in the story. She married man who mistreated her and cheated on her several times. This leads her to become more and more broken. She had a son with her first husband, in which she accidentally kills. This causes her to break and still suffers when she remarries and has her daughter in America, Lena. Her transformation was very tragic, as we see before she met her first husband, she was very talkative and outgoing to becoming a reclusive and spectral character,
Relationships and Analysis
Ying Ying fell in love with her first husband, and had a son. She tried her best to become the perfect wife only to be met with a cheating husband who forgets about her existence. This trauma in her past relationship took a toll on her perspective of relationships. This trauma has lead her to believe that she can predict the future and when a person or a relationship will be torn apart. Her daughter, Lena, really cares about her mother and wants to know what happened to make her so broken. Because of her trauma, the way she raised Lena was very passive, and this results in Lena becoming very passive and quiet. Eventually Lena is dealing with a problem of her own, as her husband constantly splits everything that they must pay for in half. This process was made in order to make everything fair, but it only ends up tearing the relationship apart. Ying Ying sees this and she wants her daugher to fix it or she will end up in the same situation as herself. Ying Ying wants what's best for her daughter, and she wants to use her past mistakes to make sure her daughter gets the best treatment.
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