Joy Luck Club Passage Analysis (pg. 64)
The book, The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan focuses on the complexity of mother-daughter relationships amongst immigrant and first generation families.Through the use of narrative and metaphor to convey Ying Ying St. Clair’s inner thoughts and the hurt and suffering she endures. Furthermore Tan’s style is easily recognizable to many mother’s and daughters because it captures their struggles to understand each other. In the passage, Tan uses narrative and description to explain the distance in the relationship between a mother and a daughter. This is present in the passage when Ying Ying St. Clair is thinking about how she interacts with her daughter.She then describes: ”I moved so secretly
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Evidence of the use of metaphor is present when St. Clair is lamenting about her failure to articulate her wants and needs to her daughter and then begins to talk about herself . She states “ I rubbed out my face over the years washing away my pain, the same way carvings on a stone are worn by water. To “rub” means to repeatedly rub back and forth on a surface. The word “Pain” means, a physical suffering or discomfort. Furthermore Tan uses metaphor to compare Ying Ying St. Clair to a worn down rock. Therefor describing the pain and suffering that caused her to erase her external face little by little. Through the use of metaphor Tan paints a vivid picture of a person’s internal suffering. In conclusion Tan’s style of writing is recognizable to the general public because she writes about universal themes, such as the mother-daughter relationship and the struggle a mother faces to be accepted into her child’s adult life. Tan uses narrative and metaphor for her younger readers to understand the parent’s perspective and for her older readers to appreciate the child’s perspective. Tan’s highly descriptive writing helps shape the reader’s understanding of the character’s relationship to each