Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club and Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom both share a common concept, the relationship between mother and daughter. Although the themes are the same, the tones are completely different. The tone in Tan’s The Joy Luck Club has a very aggressive, belligerent feel towards it, while Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom gives off a calming disagreement that may easily be resolved. The tone and diction of each passage lets the reader decipher the sort of relationship the mothers and their daughters share.
Within the story by Amy Tan, we read the excerpt “Jing- Mei Woo: Two Kinds”. Tan reminisces her childhood and remembers how controlling and possessive her mother would be. Reading from the excerpt, the fights between Tan and her mom seem to have been a regular thing. Tan’s mother forces her to be “something [she] [is] not”. Tan sobs frantically thinking “I wish I were dead” (Tan 141-142). The tone could be described as intense, maybe even bitter. The diction in the passage also reveal the bitter tone with words including sobbed, shouted, and scared.
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Amy Chua recalls back to a past memory of her trying to mend the bent relationship between her daughter and her. Chua “always tried [her] best” but her controlling maternal instincts got the best of her, when she screamed at her daughter, Lulu “RELAX!” (Chua 47-48). Chua screaming ‘relax’ is ironic because she was acting the complete opposite of what she was trying to make Lulu do. Despite Amy Chua losing her patience, the reader can see that the two girls have a loving relationship due to the fact that Lulu still refers to Chua as ‘mommy’, which is usually a term of endearment. Using words like irritable, screamed, and annoying, the word choice shows how the tone is caring but stressful. Even though Chua and her daughter may disagree at times, it was obvious that their relationship was