Comparing A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings And The Joy Luck Club

The Joy Luck Club is about the daughter of a Chinese immigrant who left her life behind to move to America. She constantly pushes her daughter to reach her full potential, which occasionally causes strife between them. “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” is about a man who crashes into a family’s courtyard. The man gets caged up for a couple of months before finally flying away. Both “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” and The Joy Luck Club express the theme of worth not being defined by standards. The short story, “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”, characterizes the neighborhood as a very superstitious community, which caused them to come to a quick conclusion on the identity of the entity found in a family’s courtyard. When a man finds

Because of their belief in angels, they assume that he is after the family’s child. They allow their expectations of angels, the standards that they expect angels to reach, they trap him in a chicken coop and subject him to atrocious treatment. The neighborhood had “pulled out [his] feathers”, “threw stones at him, trying to get him to rise”, “and burned his side with an iron for branding steers” (Márquez 8). The neighbors put him through terrible conditions because of what they expected him to do. In The Joy Luck Club, the main character went through distress due to her mother’s belief that “you could be anything you wanted to be in America” (Tan 132). Because the main character’s mother is a Chinese immigrant, she had an inflated opinion on the opportunities achievable in America. She moved in hopes of a better future for both herself and her future family, so she wanted to make the most out of her new life. This caused her to hold her daughter to high standards, which caused her daughter to worry that “the prodigy in [her] became impatient” (Tan

The idea that she couldn’t reach her parents’ standards caused her to worry that she wasn’t good enough. Both authors provide a cultural and historical setting which adds context to the same theme. The cultural setting of “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings” provides the story with the reason for the neighbors’ poor treatment of the angel. The book is set in a place where many people are highly religious and superstitious. The neighborhood had a well-respected priest who people trusted to come to “a final judgment on the nature of the captive” (Márquez 9). In this town, the people trust priests and religious figures to come to big decisions. This causes the people to believe in the fictional animals brought by the traveling shows that often come by. The townspeople treated him “as if he weren’t a supernatural creature but a circus animal” because they were used to treating the creatures as such (Márquez 4). The historical context of The Joy Luck Club is after a war took place inside China. The main character’s mother “left China with one stiff leather trunk”, which is why she places an emphasis on ensuring that the main character can take care of herself (Tan