Joy Luck Club

So far, I have noticed that there is a lot of symbolism throughout this book. In one of the other stories I likes, "Rice Husband," I think that the vase that Lena had put on top of the wobbly table symbolized her marriage. Like her marriage, even though she realized the vase was going to eventually fall off the table and break, she did nothing to prevent it. She saw that her marriage was going nowhere wand that it would eventually shatter like the vase, but she refuses to help prevent it. Her husband, Harold, also played a part in their unsuccessful marriage. Harold built the table when he was studying design, and he may have contributed because he wasn't stable or supportive enough. In the end, Lena's mother told her that you should prevent disasters it you know they are going to occur, then ignore then like she has done all her life.

Joy Luck Club

Of the second stories, I liked "The Voice From the Wall." I think that this story portrayed that the mother was becoming paranoid and a little crazy. She was very over protected of her child. I agree with some of the other blogs of my classmates that she was becoming this because America was full of crazy people who did anything.
One quote that really struck me in this story was,
"And after that I began to see terrible things. I saw these things with my Chinese eyes, the part of me I got from my mother. I saw devils dancing feverishly beneath
a hole that I had dug in the sandbox. I saw that lightning had eyes and searched to
strike down little children. I saw a beetle wearing the face of a child, which I promptly squashed with the wheel of my tricycle. And when I he came older I could see things that
Caucasian girls at school did not. Monkey rings that would splist into two and send swinging children hurtling through space. Tether balls that could splash a girl's head all over the playground in front of laughing children.

I think the main line from this quote stated that she saw all of those things with her Chinese eyes, the part she inherited from her mother. I think this is showing that it was because of her mother she was seeing these things. Her mother had told her about a story of her great grandfather whom had sentenced a beggar to death. She told her about how he was embraced with the the jagged pieces of his arm. In addition, Lena had gone inside a barricaded door in her old house and had fallen into a dark chasm. Her mother told her that if she hadn't come to rescue her, she would have been in great danger because of the evil man who lived there. After this, she began to see those terrible things. It was her mother who had gotten all these deathlike things into her head in the first place.

The Joy Luck Club

I have finished the second book and I really like the theme of the book, the mother daughter relationships. I like to read about the stories because they are in different perspectives, form China and from the United States. I think that I can relate this to the articles we had to read on our Midterm. I don't remember the exact quote but it stated that there are African all over the world with different stories, but they all started in Africa. While I was reading these stories, I came to see that they were pretty similar; they portrayed Chinese culture etc. Even though the stories themselves may be different, they portrayed same relationships between mothers and daughters. After all, all of the people in America came from China (or there ancestors did) and they share similar experiences.

Joy Luck Club

Character profile for Jing Mei Woo:

Name: Jing Mei Woo
Nick name: June
Age: 36
Ethinicity: Chinese
Location: San Francisco, California
Hometown: Shangai, CHina
Zodiac: Tiger
Favorite game: Mah Jong
Education: half a degree in art and half a degree in biology
Occupation: Copywriter
Clubs you've joined: Joy Luck Club
Family Life: Mother has died and she lives with her father
Regrets: Unable to comprehend her mother fully and not being able to communicate with her freely
Life goals: To find my two sisters in China in addition to living up to her mother's name