ipl-logo

Mother Archetypes In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

614 Words3 Pages

Amy Tan’s autobiographical novel employs four different stories where mothers and their daughters retell in meetings their personal experiences on their relationships with one another. In this way, all mother characters are portrayed with their distinctive characteristics as the text follows. Suyuan Woo is one if the mothers and the most important one, as she created “The Joy Luck Club”, to which the tittle of the novel is attributed to. Tan depicts her typical human experiences of being good, terrible and a good-bad mother. Archetypical “characters display stereotypical personalities, behaviors and characteristics regardless of how unique they may appear at first glance as, character archetypes are used by many writers as devices to help present a story” . Therefore, this essay will investigate to what …show more content…

The essay will also tackle three characteristics of the Mother archetype, such as life giver; maternal solicitation and sympathy; terrifying and inescapable. This archetype is also related with the concepts of “fertility and fruitfulness” . Whereas a contrasting characteristic related to this archetype includes being terrifying and inescapable. These above-mentioned characteristics will be the subtopics in which the main body will be divided. Such distinctive features are depicted in Amy Tan’s novel The Joy Luck Club, where four mother characters are described in varied ways, depicting the possibility of them being classified as part of a literacy archetype- The Mother. Of these four mothers, it was decided to analyze Suyuan Woo, as she may be considered the “main” mother of the novel, creator of The Joy Luck Club. As Suyuan passed away before the narrative starts, everything told of her characteristics is remembered by her daughter in flashbacks, increasing the interest to investigate on

Show More
Related

  • Character Analysis: The Hero's Journey

    933 Words  | 4 Pages

    Two protagonists of Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, Lindo and Waverly Jong live the lives of a usual Chinese mother, and American daughter. They live through struggles, and although both go through journeys, there are key distinctions in which the Jong family does not complete the Hero’s Journey. The Jong family does not complete the Hero’s Journey, primarily due to their lack of sacrifice for the purpose

    Read More

  • Two Kinds By Amy Tan Thesis Statement

    2019 Words  | 9 Pages

    Thesis Statement: In the short story, Two Kinds, Amy Tan develops a narrator who as a child seeks her mother’s approval of her, but develops into a child with her own mind, and by the end of the story embodies a woman who realizes that her mother has her own expression of love for her daughter. Thus, Amy Tan depicts a message about Jing-Mei, the narrator, accepting that everyone, especially her mother, has their own expressions of love. This will look different depending on who a person is and their background. Even though Jing-Mei does not always feel her mother loves her, she learns that her mother loves her by reflecting on her childhood and struggles.

    Read More

  • Joy Luck Club Character Analysis Essay

    760 Words  | 4 Pages

    Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club is an amazing representation of what Chinese immigrants and their families face. The broad spectrum of the mothers’ and daughters’ stories all connect back to a couple of constantly recurring patterns. These patterns are used to show that how the mothers and daughters were so differently raised affected their relationships with each other, for better and for worse. To begin with, the ever-present pattern of disconnect between the two groups of women is used to show how drastically differently they were raised.

    Read More

  • Mother Archetype In The Epic Of Gilgamesh

    1310 Words  | 6 Pages

    Mothers are caring, loving, thoughtful, borchering ,and always protected from malicious people and things. These adjectives describe not only the general mother archetype, but make them significant and important. The mother archetype is one of the most important archetypes. The mother archetype stands for all mothers, and their role in playing their mothering parts. This is not only special to that archetype, but explains why it is one.

    Read More

  • American Dream In The Joy Luck Club

    1026 Words  | 5 Pages

    In The Joy Luck Club, written by Amy Tan, we are introduced to Suyuan and her daughter Jing-Mei “June” Woo. As with any relationship, there is conflict between Suyuan Woo and her daughter, as it seems that Jing-Mei doesn’t understand her mother’s Chinese culture and ambitions. In the Chinese culture, women are seen as inferior and often lack basic rights such as the right to marriage or financial holdings, thus deprived of their potential. This is why the rights in the U.S. are seen as privileges to Chinese women, among other minorities, and why Suyuan endeavored for her daughter to become a prodigy and excel in anything and everything. Yet as Jing-Mei was forced into this ideal, and the more her mother tried to enforce this idea, the further she begun to despise her mother for attempting to turn her into a “fraud”.

    Read More

  • Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior Amy Chua Summary

    1197 Words  | 5 Pages

    Some people might argue that a child’s upbringing forms the child’s foundation of life. It forms the child’s identity and its view of life. The upbringing of children is a wide concept because it is never the same. The question is if there is an edge between upbringing and torture. The intention of upbringing is indisputable – you want your children to have a great life and a great future, but perchance certain ways of educating children can cause more damage than good.

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast Tan And Hurston

    1409 Words  | 6 Pages

    For instance, her famous novel ‘The Joy Luck Club’ depicts the Chinese mother and her American daughter relationship where they go through various circumstances trying to understand each other including the evolvement that comes in their relationships as the daughters know more about their mother’s life stories. Secondly, Tan considers the theme of identity in terms of Chinese immigrants and their life experiences as an immigrant in the United States. She reveals how the children born to the immigrants strive in an environment which is a mixture of American and Chinese influence. Moreover, Tan is found to have explored identity issues through her fictive creations and tackled the issue of authorial identity (Becnel, 2010). Similarly, romantic love is another subject included in the literary artworks of Amy Tan which considers the relationships and romance an important aspect of human’s life.

    Read More

  • Similarities And Differences In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

    1558 Words  | 7 Pages

    People may think that movies aren't as different as their book counterpart. While that may be true, there are many aspects between the book and the movie that aren't as similar. The book The Joy Luck Club written by Amy Tan share many similarities and differences with the movie by the same name. The book and the movie possess similar qualities; nevertheless there are many parts where the movie diverged from the book. However, although there are many differences, both movie and book place an emphasis on the same themes.

    Read More

  • The Importance Of Communication In The Joy Luck Club

    1225 Words  | 5 Pages

    “Communication is the key to a successful relationship, attentiveness, and consistency. Without it, there is no relationship,” (Bleau). The Joy Luck Club is a novel written by Amy Tan. Set in the twentieth century, this novel depicts the life of four Chinese immigrant women escaping their past and their American-grown daughters. The novel reveals the mothers’ hardship-filled past and motivations alongside with the daughters’ inner conflicts and struggles.

    Read More

  • Character Analysis: The Hero's Journey

    171 Words  | 1 Pages

    “The Hero’s Journey” is term for a narrative style that was identified by scholar Joseph Campbell. The narrative pattern would depict a character’s heroic journey, and categorize the character’s experiences into three large sections: departure, which contained the hero’s call to adventure, fulfillment, which consisted of the hero’s initiation, trials, and transformation, and finally the return. The novel The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan investigates the relationship and actions of four Chinese women and their daughters. The character Lindo Jong’s youth in China exemplifies the three part heroic journey in how she leaves the familiar aspects in her life, faces trials in the home of her betrothed, ..... Departure:

    Read More

  • Woman With Dead Child Kollwitz

    798 Words  | 4 Pages

    The mother is sketched in the nude, as she is barefoot. She sits with her legs crossed and caresses her fragile offspring with a sense of ownership. She lays her head on the child’s chest, as the child is characterized with no sudden movement. The mother’s face is defined by heartache and mourning. However, she is a symbol of strength.

    Read More

  • Gender Roles In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

    639 Words  | 3 Pages

    In The Joy Luck Club many aspects of Chinese culture and tradition were used to convey the cultural difference between the views of the mothers and their children. One of the many things mentioned in the book are Chinese zodiac years; the mothers believed that the year their daughter was born in, influenced their personality and characteristics. Much of Rose’s personality is that of those born in the year of the sheep. Rose is a passive person who cannot make decisions for herself. She finds it much easier to agree to the decisions of her husband.

    Read More

  • Joy Luck Club Kitchen God's Wife Analysis

    1846 Words  | 8 Pages

    After reading Tan’s novels, readers has to come to the conclusion that, in order to achieve a balance between- the world conditions, one cannot only be supportive to the New American ways and rejects the Old Chinese ways. The daughter’s initially could not accept their Chinese tradition after understanding their cultural reconciliation they realize that both the conditions are very important for establishing their life. Similarly, in case of husband and wife relationship, Tan brings out the patriarchal system. In Joy Luck Club and Kitchen God’s Wife novel, Tan typically portrays the male dominating characters of Ted and Wen Fu, while she escorts her female characters Rose and Weili at the end by regaining self-respect from the male dominant society and starting a new life of self-assertiveness. In Joy Luck Club, Rose marries Ted, who typically shows his patriarchal male dominance, while Rose completely becomes an obeying wife, but Tan plots the conditions to become worse that Rose wanted divorce from her husband and she started

    Read More

  • Mother Archetype In Literature

    1338 Words  | 6 Pages

    Mothers are caring, loving, thoughtful, borchering ,and always protected from malicious people and things. These adjectives describe not only the general mother archetype, but make them significant and important. The mother archetype is one of the most important archetypes. The mother archetype stands for all mothers, and their role in playing their mothering parts. This is not only special to that archetype, but explains why it is one.

    Read More

  • Ancestra In The Joy Luck Club Analysis

    1054 Words  | 5 Pages

    This sense of careful design enhances Tan’s portrayal of traditional china with its rigidly structured hierarchies and social structures, its codified rituals, and its established protocols governing the lives of its people. By contrast, the American settings pulse with life, energy, and chaos. Whereas in China, the Joy Luck mothers had centuries of established convention dictating their behavior and America’s cultural practices are strange and unfathomable and these women who have left china specifically for the chance to start afresh in a new country far from the stultifying tradition of the old, find themselves reverting to the familiar customs of their faraway homeland. Barred for a variety of reasons from achieving the dreams of success that brought them to America, the mothers transfer their ambitions to their daughters in whom they hope to combine the best of Chinese and American culture. On those daughters, who grow up in Chinatown but attend American schools, rest the hopes of their immigrant

    Read More

More about Mother Archetypes In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

Open Document