Essay Sample: Lindo And Waverly Relationship

📌Category: Books, The Joy Luck Club
📌Words: 1058
📌Pages: 4
📌Published: 12 June 2022

Parents disagree with their children a lot. In The Joy Luck Club Waverly and Lindo, her mother, have several disagreements with each other and are both very stubborn. In the Beginning of the story, Lindo ends up being matched with this kid, and he and his family are cruel to her. She makes up a story about how the ancestors told her the marriage wouldn’t work out and that the servant girl was pregnant with his baby. Waverly teaches herself how to play chess and becomes a chess champion until her and her mother get into an argument about it.

Throughout the novel, The Joy Luck Club, Lindo and Waverly perceptions of one another changes.Lindo’s perception of Waverly, in the beginning of the novel, is that she is naive, has no Chinese character and is very ignorant. Waverly’s perception of Lindo was that her Chinese culture was too embarrassing and that her mother just wanted to show her off. In The Joy Luck Club, the chapter “The Rules of the Game”, Lindo doesn’t want her daughter playing chess, but as soon as Waverly starts winning Lindo wants to show her off to everyone they meet. Waverly finds this embarrassing and thinks her mother should just learn to play chess. Her mother takes her shopping to show her off, “One day, after we left a shop I said under my breath, I wish you wouldn’t do that, telling everybody I’m your daughter. My mother stopped walking. . . . It’s just so obvious. It’s just so embarrassing. . . . Why do you have to use me to show off? If you want to show off, then why don’t you learn to play chess?” (Tan 101). Waverly feels annoyed and embarrassed by Lindo’s bragging about Waverly’s success for two reasons. First, Waverly knows that American culture views showing off as unseemly. Second, Waverly feels like Lindo is trying to take credit for Waverly’s accomplishment. As Lindo feels her own and Waverly’s identities are tightly linked, she expects to be admired for Waverly’s talent. Waverly, however, wants full and sole credit for her accomplishments in the American way. Lindo grew up in China and went through a lot there from being put into an arranged marriage to figuring out how to get out of it. Her daughter doesn’t understand any of this and shows no resemblance to Chinese culture. Lindo thinks Waverley is too American and that she failed to teach her Chinese character. When Lindo expresses this Waverly just says to not be so old-fashioned to her mother, “I couldn’t teach her about Chinese character. How to obey parents and listen to your mother’s mind. How not to show your own thoughts, to put your feelings behind your face so you can take advantage of hidden opportunities”(Tan pg. 254). Lindo wanted Waverly to have American circumstances—the ability to change her station—but still have Chinese character, including an inviolable bond to her mother. Lindo believes that she herself is still essentially Chinese and that she failed to teach the American Waverly these Chinese traits, making the two of them more different from mothers and daughters should rightfully be. When Waverly asserts that she is her own person, a statement that Waverly asserts with pride, Lindo feels distress and questions how such a disconnect could have occurred. By the end of the novel their perceptions of each other changes.

By the end of the novel Lindo realizes that Waverly resembles her a lot and does have a bit of Chinese culture but both her and Waverly realize that Lindo has also changed and resembles more American culture than she did in the beginning of the novel. In The Joy Luck Club, “Double Face”, Waverly takes Lindo to get her hair done before her wedding, when Waverly says she wants to go to China for her honeymoon And her mother says she won’t have to worry about fitting in there because she is clearly American. The Hairdresser says that Lindo and Waverly look alike and Lindo notices they have similar noses. This makes Lindo a bit upset but Waverly seems proud of it. Waverly used to try to hide her Chinese features, but she likes it now, "She looks in the mirror. She sees nothing wrong. ‘What do you mean? Nothing happened. . . . It’s your nose. You gave me this nose. . . . Our nose isn’t so bad. . . . It makes us look devious.’ She looks pleased. ‘It means we’re looking one way, while following another. We’re for one side and also the other. We mean what we say, but our intentions are different. . . . They just know we’re two-faced. . . . This is good if you get what you want.”’ (Tan 302). Lindo has noticed that she and Waverly share the same nose. Lindo had thought she damaged her nose in a bus accident, and she does not like the look on Waverly, but Waverly thinks the feature was inherited and likes her nose. Suggesting that the nose looks devious shows Waverly’s lack of interest in conventional “goodness.” She feels proud of her own, and her mother’s, ruthless nature. Perhaps character, rather than an accident, changed Lindo’s nose over time. Waverly not only realizes she resembles some of her mother's Chinese features but is proud of it, when if this was in the beginning of the novel she would be disgusted that she looks like her mother. Although Lindo doesn’t like how American Waverly is and how she failed to show her Chinese character, Lindo herself has become a little American over the years, “I think about our two faces. I think about my intentions. Which one is American? Which one is Chinese? one is better? If you show one, you must always sacrifice the other. It is like what happened when I went back to China last year after I had not been there for almost forty years. “(Tan pg 266). Lindo realizes that she has become somewhat American over the years. She believes the change in her character is reflected in a change in her appearance, one that seemed obvious to the locals when she went back to China. Lindo feels ambivalent about this change, yet she does feel bonded with her daughter in an unexpected way: Instead of making Waverly Chinese, as she desired, Lindo has been made American. Waverly and Lindo have noticed that She has become more Chinese and Lindo became more American over the years although neither one wanted to become that.

 In conclusion, Waverly and Lindo’s perceptions of each other changes. In the beginning they are embarrassed by each other but in the end they understand each other a little better than before, and they both become something that they really were trying to avoid or were embarrassed by being.

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