The Joy Luck Club Literary Analysis Essay Example

Nearly every single person you know has been whitewashed. As a baby, you know nothing besides your basic desire for food, water, and warmth. Almost all parents will teach their kids to have an outstanding character. Parents will teach their children to act kind, honest, unselfish, understanding, and many other good qualities. Many children’s books like Aesop’s Fables will have valuable lessons, morals, and themes to teach the reader something about the world or life in general. Some of these themes will be about having a virtuous character whereas others will teach you something about how to succeed in life and create a better community around you. Another book with very meaningful themes is The Joy Luck Club. Through the meaningful stories of immigrant mothers and their Americanized daughters, Amy Tan develops the themes of mother-daughter relationships, storytelling and tradition, and sacrifice in the fictional novel The Joy Luck Club.

As this story is told through the perspectives of the mothers and daughters, the theme of mother-daughter relationships quickly becomes evident. One important relationship in the story surfaced from the constant battle between Waverly and her mother, Lindo. Lindo would constantly embarrass Waverly by bragging in the streets about her dominance in chess. Eventually, Waverly got tired of it and ran away. Waverly thinks that running away will make Lindo feel bad and give in when, "I [Waverly] imagined my mother, first walking briskly down one street or another looking for me, then giving up and returning home to await my arrival," (Tan 51). The aforementioned quote exemplifies how Waverly strives to do whatever it takes in order to win the emotional battle between her and her mother. Waverly desires a reaction from Lindo that might show that Lindo actually loves and cares about her. Without one, she has no way of truly knowing how much Lindo cares about her and how much Lindo just enjoys the benefits she receives from Waverly's ability to play chess. Unfortunately for Waverly, Lindo produces her own ideas on how to deal with Waverly's flamboyant act. After waiting for a few hours, Waverly returns home, and "I [Waverly] heard my mother speak in a dry voice 'We not concerning this girl. This girl not have concerning for us,' " (51). Lindo continues to ignore Waverly giving her the "silent treatment" as it gives Waverly time to plan her next move. Their relationship seems extraordinary because of the way they constantly think of their next step. The battle never ends, for when one of them thinks that they will "win," the other comes back with another witty move to even the score. Just like the game of chess Waverly plays so well, the battle between her and her mother is centered around strategy, power, and, in the end, love. 

Although Suyuan never existed as a living character in the novel, it's still obvious that she and June had a distant relationship. With the language barrier between them, June and Suyuan faced difficulties communicating with each other. As you could imagine, relationships without proper communication often don't create strong bonds. When the mothers task June with telling her lost long sisters everything about Suyuan, her mind goes blank and she says, "What will I say? What can I tell them about my mother? I don't know anything. She was my mother," (16). June's relationship with her mother appears noticeably out of sight, but as the book goes on she learns more about her mother and develops a better understanding of her. For the time being, this statement horrified the other mothers because of their fear of having the same relationships with their daughters. The mothers' reaction demonstrates how important their relationships with their daughters are to them. 

The second significant theme illustrated in this novel is storytelling and tradition. Many of the stories that the mothers tell were designed to induce fear. This fear will hopefully manipulate their children into behaving in a way that will benefit them. Popo, An-mei's grandmother, uses this strategy often by telling parables to An-mei and her brother. An-mei quickly became scared of Popo as there became more and more instances where "Popo told me [An-mei] about a girl who refused to listen to her elders. One day this bad girl shook her head so vigorously to refuse her auntie's simple request that a little white ball fell from her ear and out poured all her brains, as clear as chicken broth," (18). An-mei took each of these parables into account, and they partially transformed her identity. She becomes fearful of her own grandmother that acts as her parental figure as a result of the impactful parables. An-mei's change in character perfectly demonstrates how meaningful storytelling is in the story. Lena St. Claire provides another example of storytelling being impactful on one of the characters' lives. In this case, the story that Lena's mother tells simply becomes true in Lena's life. One night, as Lena refuses to eat her rice, "My mother had looked in my rice bowl and told me I would marry a bad man. 'Aii, Lena,' she had said after that dinner so many years ago, 'your future husband have one pock mark for every rice you not finish,' " (82). The simple made-up story told by Ying-Ying ends up having unparalleled effects. First, the man who Lena fears will become her husband dies of a rare measles disease. Supposedly, he dies because Lena wouldn't eat her rice and gave him so many marks that he couldn't survive. In this part of the novel, storytelling proves to be so powerful that it leads to a boy's death.

Throughout the novel, Amy Tan has shown that sacrifice has been undoubtedly one of the most meaningful themes. All of the strong mothers in the story sacrificed their pride, strength, happiness, and even their flesh in order to help other people. One impactful example of this comes when An-mei watches her mother sit in the corner "And then [she] cut a piece of meat from her arm. Tears poured down her face and blood spilled to the floor. My mother took her flesh and put it into the soup. She cooked magic in the ancient tradition to try to cure her mother this one last time," (21). Cutting skin from your arm off in order to attempt to heal your mother cannot be seen as anything but an ultimate form of sacrifice. People will occasionally say things like "I would take a bullet for you," meaning they would sacrifice their bodies to keep you safe. What An-mei's mother is doing is not very far off from this often hyperbolic statement. Just like An-mei's mother, Suyuan sacrifices herself for her family. She needed to flee her city in China because the Japanese were invading. She brought with her as much as she could carry including her twin infants. She started to drop some unessential items she had "And later she also dropped the bags of wheat flour and rice and kept walking like this for many miles, singing songs to her little girls, until she was delirious with pain and fever," (163). Suyuan sacrifices her energy and her willpower to try to keep her precious babies alive. She had little hope and nobody helping her, but she kept fighting and ended up possibly sacrificing her survival for the babies. The characters in this novel show great sacrifices because they aren't just sacrificing a bit of their time, but are sacrificing their bodies and even possibly their lives for their family in order to create the most nourishment possible.

Undeniably, the themes of mother-daughter relationships, storytelling, and sacrifice are prominently exhibited throughout Amy Tan's novel, The Joy Luck Club through each of the characters and their actions. Any and all of these themes can also be translated into the real world. Sometimes in school, work, or at home, you have to make small sacrifices in order to complete a task. This seems like a virtuous action, but we have no way of knowing the right way to act in any circumstance. These three themes displayed in The Joy Luck Club are just a few of the millions of lessons taught by novels, stories, and firsthand experiences. When tough situations arise, you will have to decide what to do based on the many morals and themes you have learned throughout your life. There's one catch; in the end, you will never know if you were right or wrong.