Literary Analysis #7

1. The Joy Luck Club is about a club Suyuan Woo creates during the Chinese war. The club is established during the war but continues in America long after all the warring has stopped. The joy luck club, consists of four Chinese women and there daughters as members. At these meetings they talk, eat, and gamble. The women grow old together until Suyuan the founder dies. Her daughter June Woo 37 at the time struggles with the idea of replacing the place a mother should hold.All of the girls struggle with their relationships with there mothers. Eventually June discovers that her mother had more children in china and that her sisters have been found, the book concludes with the other girls sending June to meet her sisters.
 2. The general theme of this novel is the relationship between mother and daughter and the ultimate sacrifice a mother will make for her own. In the novel all the daughters struggle with there overall relationship and emotional connections with their mothers, feeling overall sadness, joy, and discovery.
3. Tan's tone through out the novel is very serious which is appropriate considering the topics that are being addressed. There are even times where the tone and mood of the book are slow moving and depressing.
“Then you must teach my daughter this same lesson. How to lose your innocence but not your hope. How to laugh forever.”
 “Now you see,' said the turtle, drifting back into the pond, 'why it is useless to cry. Your tears do not wash away your sorrows. They feed someone else's joy. And that is why you must learn to swallow your own tears.”
  “Because sometimes that is the only way to remember what is in your bones. You must peel off your skin, and that of your mother, and her mother. Until there is nothing. No scar, no skin, no flesh.
4. Tan takes advantage of many literary devices when writing the novel The Joy Luck Club, some of which are foreshadowing, simile, metaphor, allusion, rhetorical questions, theme, motifs, symbolism, tone, and symbolism.
 "Over the years, she told me the same story, except for the ending, which grew darker, casting long shadows into her life, and eventually into mine."
 "Even though I was young, I could see the pain of the flesh and the worth of the pain."
 "After the gold was removed from my body I felt lighter, more free. They say this is what happens if you lack metal. You begin to think as an independent person."
 "And now I also see what part of me is Chinese. It is so obvious. It is my family. It is in our blood."
 "Why are you attracted only to Chinese nonsense?"
 "I wanted my children to have the best combination: American circumstances and Chinese character. How could I know these things do not mix?"
"In my mother's case, this would be the first day of the lunar new year. And because it is the new year, all debts must be paid, or disaster and misfortune will follow."
 "That bad crab, only you tried to take it. Everybody else want best quality. You, your thinking different. Waverly took best-quality crab. You took worst, because you have best-quality heart. You have style no one can teach. Must be born this way. I see you."
 “Isn't hate merely the result of wounded love?”
 “And I think now that fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention. But somehow, when you lose something you love, faith takes over."
 “So this is what I will do. I will gather together my past and look. I will see a thing that has already happened. the pain that cut my spirit loose. I will hold that pain in my hand until it becomes hard and shiny, more clear. And then my fierceness can come back, my golden side, my black side. I will use this sharp pain to penetrate my daughter's tough skin and cut her tiger spirit loose. She will fight me, because this is the nature of two tigers. But I will win and giver her my spirit, because this is the way a mother loves her daughter.”
 “In two years' time, my scar became pale and shiny and I had no memory of my mother. That is the way it is with a wound. The wound begins to close in on itself, to protect what is hurting so much. And once it is closed, you no longer see what is underneath, what started the pain."
 “A girl is like a young tree, she said. You must stand tall and listen to your mother standing next to you. That is the only way to grow strong and straight. But if you bend to listen to other people, you will grow crooked and weak. You will fall to the ground with the first strong wind. And then you will be like a weed, growing wild in any direction, running along the ground until someone pulls you out and throws you away. ”
 “There's no hope. There's no reason to keep trying.
Because you must. This is not hope. Not reason. This is your fate. This is your life, what you must do.”

Characterization:
1.Tan uses a combination of both indirect and direct characterization to add a higher quality to her characters. An example of indirect characterization would he the way the other girls react to the things that are shared at their club meetings or when the story telling is in play. And some examples of when she uses direct characterization would be when she reveals June's true feelings and struggles she faces when approaching her relationship with her mother or in other words the lack of one.
2. The author's syntax and diction does change when switching the focus from character to character and this is because the characters speak in first person throughout the novel when they give their testimonies to the reader therefore they must in order for it to make sense, because each girl is different and facing different struggles and situations. 
3. The protagonist of the story, June, is dynamic in my eyes because after she discovers her sisters in china she has a whole new look on life and is much less bitter about her situation. She is also a round character because she has many qualities about her.
4. Overall when looking back on my reading of the book I do feel as if I've actually met these people and think that is partly because of my experiences speaking with other minorities here in Santa Maria and the troubles they faced. The story is not just a cultural story but a story of family in which we can ultimately all relate to.