FREE ESSAY ON JOY LUCK CLUB

JOY LUCK CLUB

Joy Luck Club
Final Essay: #4 Literary Analysis
by
Dustin Adams
The Joy Luck Club is a representation of the persistent tensions and 
powerful bonds between mother and daughter in a Chinese American society and is written
by Amy Tan. The book illustrates the hardships both the mother and daughters go through
in order to please the other. Also, it shows the troubles the daughters face when growing
up in two cultures. This book reveals that most of the time mothers really do know best.
Throughout all of the Jing-Mei Woo stories, June has to recall all of the 
memories of what her mother had told her. She remembers how her mother left 
her babies during the war. June's mother felt that since she had failed as a mother to
her first babies she had failed as a person. When she made June take piano lessons June
thought that she was trying to make her become a child prodigy like Waverly, but her
mother did this because she knew it would benefit June for the rest of her life. 
Because of the death of her mother, June was forced to take the place of 
her mother in more than just filling her place at the Maj Jong table. The mother 
daughter tradition was broken because the lost babies were found after the death of their
mother. June's trip to China can be seen as the completion of her 
mother's promise to return, honoring her sisters by attempting to transfer what she had
absorbed from her mother and her tradition. 
"And I think, My mother is right. I am becoming Chinese"(Tan 306). This 
is what June thinks as she crosses into China. Like the Taoist Yin/Yang symbol, 
June and her mother have become two of the same thing. The only difference 
being their thoughts, June with American, her mother with Chinese. This has kept the
mother-daughter tradition alive but has also weakened it. This happens often, but there
is always something that sticks and is passed down from generation to generation. 
Heredity is the transmission from one generation to the next of factors that determine
the traits of offspring. Although successful breeding of plants and animals was practiced
by humans long before modern civilizations were established, there is no evidence that
these early people understood the nature of hereditary factors or how they are
transmitted through reproduction.
The story of June and An-mei is a prime example of heredity. Although many girls' worst
fears would be turning out like their mother, it can't, in many ways, be helped. June
felt slightly hesitant in becoming more like her mother but, it, in the words of June's
mother An-mei, Cannot be helped (Tan 306). June's hesitance can be seen in a quote
referring to her mothers statement of certain heredity: And when she said this, I saw
myself transforming like a werewolf, a mutant tag of DNA suddenly triggered, repplicating
itself into a syndrome, a cluster of telltale Chinese behaviors, all of those things my
mother did to embarrass me..... (Tan 307). Whether these traits were manifested due to
lifelong exposure to her mother, or they were simply genetic, codes of DNA by which
June's life and habbits would be determined, one thing, in this case, is for certain:
daughters and mothers are alike. It can be seen in everyday life, and Amy Tan beautifully
describes and exhibits this fact in her portrayl of the stories involving June and her
mother.
Bibliography
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