Works of literature raise several questions throughout their stories. Each work of art poses a main question that does not quite offer an answer as a critic named Roland Barthes has once stated. Amy Tan illustrates a question that does not completely offer an answer in her novel The Joy Luck Club in which Tan narrates the lives of four different mothers who are part of this club which meets to eat food and discuss things which brought all of them joy. The mothers emigrated from China and those mother’s daughters are all American-born so that there is a little bit of a cultural difference between the mothers and their daughters. Amy Tan poses the question of how mothers influence their daughters as they raise them. Tan illustrates this question
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For example, An-Mei is the only one to greet her mother after her mother had been gone for so long and had abandoned An-Mei and her brother (Tan 46). Although An-Mei is only a child in this recount of the life that she had in China, she still greatly respects her mother despite everything that her mother had put her through by abandoning her. She remains loyal to her mother as she is the only one who attempts to great her when her mother arrives home to pay her respects to her dying Popo. The same idea of respect and loyalty is mirrored with Lindo’s childhood story of how she is sent to live in the house of the boy she is betrothed to even though she does not wish to. She willingly does so because of her family even as she says “I wondered why my destiny had been decided, why I should have an unhappy life so someone else could have a happy one” (Tan 58). Lindo expresses how unhappy she is with her new living arrangement but does it because she respects her mother’s and her family’s wishes to uphold a promise they had made long ago to have her marry Tyan-yu. By respecting the wishes of her family, Lindo shows that she is loyal to them as well. The mothers of the Joy Luck Club have shown their continuous loyalty and respect for their mothers and their families even though they have gone through situations which would not have been ideal for
For example, An-Mei is the only one to greet her mother after her mother had been gone for so long and had abandoned An-Mei and her brother (Tan 46). Although An-Mei is only a child in this recount of the life that she had in China, she still greatly respects her mother despite everything that her mother had put her through by abandoning her. She remains loyal to her mother as she is the only one who attempts to great her when her mother arrives home to pay her respects to her dying Popo. The same idea of respect and loyalty is mirrored with Lindo’s childhood story of how she is sent to live in the house of the boy she is betrothed to even though she does not wish to. She willingly does so because of her family even as she says “I wondered why my destiny had been decided, why I should have an unhappy life so someone else could have a happy one” (Tan 58). Lindo expresses how unhappy she is with her new living arrangement but does it because she respects her mother’s and her family’s wishes to uphold a promise they had made long ago to have her marry Tyan-yu. By respecting the wishes of her family, Lindo shows that she is loyal to them as well. The mothers of the Joy Luck Club have shown their continuous loyalty and respect for their mothers and their families even though they have gone through situations which would not have been ideal for