“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. Throughout the entire novel, the mothers and daughters face inner struggles, family conflict, and societal collision. The divergence of cultures produces tension and miscommunication, which effectively causes the collision of American morals, beliefs, and priorities with Chinese culture which …show more content…
The difference in language leads to miscommunication but the overlying consequence of it is lack of understanding and empathy for one another which leads to conflict. “Language takes on a metonymic relation to culture in Tan's portrayal of the gap between the mothers and daughters in The Joy Luck Club.” (Hamilton). The language barriers between the daughters and the mothers create the cultural barriers. Language barriers emphasize and directly influences cultural barriers. Cultural barriers prevent communication between people from all around the world, especially between the mothers and the daughters, and not necessarily figuratively. The language barrier between the mothers and the daughters can be symbolic.The lack of understanding and comprehension for one another creates a language barrier between the mothers and the daughters. “These kinds of explanations made me feel my mother and I spoke two different languages, which we did. I talked to her in English, she answered back in Chinese.” (Tan 84). Peoples' communicating leads to the spread of different ideas. Language connects societies figuratively and literally. Culture and language influence people extensively which allow people to be susceptible to miscommunication when a barrier is too vast. Familial relationships disrupt from language barriers. “Divergent perceptions and absence of a common language of communication ...they fail to fathom each other’s feelings and likes and dislikes” (Priya). Miscommunication between people creates rifts and lays pretense for tension and dispassion. Without communication, people become impatient and disassociate. “They see daughters who grow impatient when their mothers talk in Chinese, who think they are stupid when they explain things in fractured English”(Tan 31). Apprehension creates misunderstanding. Apathy negates relationships and destroys any chance of understanding.
Suyuan’s Heroism The Joy Luck Club written by Amy Tan affects the relationship of four mothers and their daughters. Throughout their journeys of figuring out one another, they each learned a new quality about themselves. “The Hero’s Adventure,” written by Joseph Campbell, demonstrates how a person goes through a cycle to be claimed as a hero for another person who needs saving. Tan’s novel describes how each of the heroes went through all four phases of the hero's journey.
I believe that the Joy Luck Club is called the same thing to remember what happened on the mountain and the losses that these immigrants feel every day. When they invest in stocks, they are hoping to get lucky. They still have the same basic principles of the original club, but the immigrants have modernized this club to better fit in American culture. The name also remains to remind the members that there will always be a little thing that can help to keep you optimistic, a little bit of hope and fun times with your friends can make the bad times worse.
While at a public speaking, Tan realized that she was using all these large words that her audience understood but her mother did not. “I was saying things like, “The intersection of memory upon imagination” and “There is an aspect of my fiction that relates to thus–and-thus…the forms of English I did not use at home with my mother” (Tan 58). Tan’s mother was in the room while Tan was giving the speech and that was when she realized that language could be a powerful tool that can connect each other in different ways. The English language can also bring people together who speak English but not in such a common way. “We were talking about the price of new and used furniture and I heard myself saying this: “Not waste money that way” (Tan 58).
Bi, Zijian Thu. 3/5/2015 English 2B Ms. Freeland 2° WHEN THE DREAM COMES TRUE What is your American Dream? “The Joy Luck Club”, a novel by Amy Tan, talks about how four mother-daughter pairs have fulfilled their American Dreams. Suyuan and Jing-mei was one of the mother-daughter pair who wants to fulfill their dreams in America.
Language plays an important role in one’s culture. Not only is it used for every day communication, it is also used to pass down stories in some cultures. In The Latehomecomer, the language difference between the Hmong and Americans causes problems for the Yang family. However, the Hmong language is very important to their people. They use it to pass down stories, which is an important part of their culture.
Tan expresses the life experiences of Chinese immigrants to the United States and attempts to depict the relationship of a mother and daughter through her significant piece of writing ‘The Joy Club’. Therefore, all these authors somehow portrayed their early struggles and their view point towards life from their literary
In this article, Tan 's argue that her mother 's "Broken English" has caused unfairness, disinterest, and limitations throughout their life. Tan 's mother was discriminated a lot throughout her life, all because of her "Broken English". Growing up speaking "Broken English" has caused Tan 's mother to be treated unfairly. For example, in one body paragraph, Tan talks about her mother having her to call people on the phone pretending to be her.
“Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan is the short story about the importance of language and how it is a key for communication. Tan emigrated from China to Oakland, California and she was a first generation of Asian-American. The author is very fascinated by the language and she believes that the language has the power of emotions, a visual image, a complex idea, and a simple truth. She also believes that there are many different types of “Englishes”.
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.
She said it depends on the culture and also how deep that person accent is. That causes human beings issues understanding each other. Language can affects communication by dividing or unifying people. First of all, one way language can divides or unify people is through gender.
Amy Tan's essay ¨Mother Tongue¨ is about language and the barriers it can create when people cannot speak with perfect accuracy or the way that is known as the norm. She uses examples of how language impacted her mother so that she could reach out to others who have had similar experiences and show them that they are not alone, that this happens to other people more often than they might think. Additionally, she uses these examples to show people who aren't affected by a language barrier what this discrimination can look like and how it impacts a person and the people close to them. She explains how the discrimination of her mother impacted herself because she wanted to convey a message that discrimination does not always only impact one person, it can impact everyone around them as well and change how their lives are run.
In her novel, The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan focuses on the fact that the bond between a mother and daughter can overcome any ethnic barrier. Despite there being many disagreements and arguments about the ways to live their lives, Tan defies this issue by creating a bond that is unbreakable even though the experienced different upbringings. Certain disagreements keep the novel interesting and create a conflict depicting the problems stemming from this barrier. Through her use of similes, metaphors, and flashbacks, Tan shows how the bond between a mother and daughter can withstand even the strongest cultural differences.
I have read the book The Joy Luck Club that was written by Amy Tam, who is a Chinese American writer. The relationship between mother and daughter in the book seems to be a struggle between liberty and authority. Mother represented the authority that tried to shape a daughter with his own idea and refuses the independence of her daughter; the daughter was a symbol of freedom that tried to deny the authority of the mother and got rid of the influence of the mother. The author described the conflicts between generation gap and estrangement between four pairs of mothers and daughters that reflected the collision and compatibility between Chinese culture and America culture.
The Joy Luck Club Comparative study The Joy Luck Club (1989), introduced the cultural values of China and America which was highly successful. It remained nine months on the Times Bestseller and was re-created into a movie which released in 1993 with the same name. Although there are not much influential differences, the visual/audio effects in movies, structures and languages, including the tones and pronunciations made some changes on the individual’s preference. Unlike the book, the movie The Joy Luck Club added audio and visual effects to make the plot more emotional and empathic.
In both novels the children fail to grasp their parents point of view and vice versa. In The Joy Luck Club the points of view of the Chinese speaking parents and their English speaking children are severely limited by the language barrier that exists between them. Jing-mei one of the daughters in The Joy Luck Club, called June by her American friends, states that the way she and her mother speak, “ made me feel my mother and I spoke two different languages, which we did. I talked to her in English, she answered back in Chinese” (Tan 12). June and her mother literally speak two separate languages, and with this occurring, a common point of view can never be reached.