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Mother Daughter Relationship In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

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Mother daughter relationship has always been special. They are close to each other and understand each other very well. For a mother, daughter is just an extension of her, a part of her. The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan, illustrates what life is like for many foreigners in America who are trying to give their child the opportunities they most likely did not have themselves as children. Its a story about four Immigrant mothers fulfilling their duties as mothers. Sacrifice, caring, and loyalty these are the qualities of a mother. A mother occupies the highest and the most indispensable place in the home due to the following virtues. All the sacrifices are for the petulance of the American daughters, who do not value their mothers’ generosities. In their Chinese culture the mother always makes sacrifices for her …show more content…

The loyalty and selflessness of the mothers ' devotion speaks to the force of the bond between parent and daughter. In "The Red Candle" Lindo complains"I once sacrificed my life to keep my parents’ promise. This means nothing to you, because to you promises mean nothing"(49). When she says "this means nothing to you" Lindo 's tone is clearly frustrated because she is making accusations. she compares her daughter 's loyalty to her against her own loyalty to her own parents, and concludes that Waverly is somehow an inferior daughter. Lindo 's speech shows the strengths, but also the limits, of the mother-daughter relationship. Daughters show incredible loyalty to their parents, and vice-versa, but sometimes, such loyalty can fade away, or be placed behind other priorities and it 's irrational for a parent to demand total loyalty of her daughter. Sacrifice and promises mean different things to the two generations of women. For the younger generation, there is rarely any consequence to not following through on a promise. Lindo worries that her granddaughter will continue the pattern of making worthless promises, rather than respecting the Chinese value

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914 Words | 4 Pages

By doing so she is coming across as an affectionate and understanding parent, who wants their child to recognize their full potential. In another example she states, “It will be expected of you my son, that, as you are favored with superior advantages under the instructive eye of a tender parent, you improvement should bear some proportion to your advantages” (21-24). She is reminding

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685 Words | 3 Pages

7: One way this tone is present is through the harsh words that the mother calls her daughter, mainly the constant repetition of “slut” such as the line”...try to walk like a lady and not like the slut you are so bent on becoming…” 8: This expresses that the mother is displeased about her daughter’s life and thinks that she should listen to her to ratify it, however, she does so in a disrespectful manner by calling her a slut without regard to her daughter’s emotions, which highlights an aggressive/belligerent tone. 9: The mother is also commanding due to her constant downplay of her daughter's responses, for example “... but I don’t sing benna on Sundays at all and never in Sunday school; this is how to sew on a button…” 10: In this segment, the daughter tells the mother that she never sings the song “Benna” after being accused of it, still the mother does not take heed of her daughter’s correction and instead just keeps ruling her

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812 Words | 4 Pages

Every mother wants what the best for her child, even if that child may not believe so. In her letter to her son, John Quincy Adams, Abigail Adams addresses him during his travels in France and defends the rationale of her previous advice while providing her new advice, and partly demands, on the subjects of honor and duty. Abigail Adams uses emotional appeals in the form of personal repetition, flattering metaphors, and prideful personification in order to advise and persuade her son in his personal growth and appeal to his personal qualities, such as pride of honesty and knowledge, to spur his ambitions and actions. To start off the letter, after greeting him and explaining the occasion of her writing, Abigail uses personal repetition with the word “your,” before qualities and events with a positive connotation to appeal to John’s pride and leave him open to listen to more of her her advice, as she already successfully advised him in his trip to France. In only the second sentence of the letter, Abigail already throws in that her advice is, to John, “for your own benefit,” (5) later she speaks of, once again to John, “your knowledge,” (11) and finally, “your understanding,” (14).

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207 Words | 1 Pages

Thesis Statement about theme of literary work- In Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, expressions of love and hatred are shown in multiple mother-daughter relationships resulting in negative impacts such as pain, bitterness, and regret because of their differing opinions. Support Point #1- Suyuan Woo guiltily leaves her twin daughters on the ground in China as she walks away in tears.

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1814 Words | 8 Pages

The mother is clearly counting how much time she has away from her children. Her awareness of the time shows her unhappiness. What she wants is to be free from this restraint. Everything about Liza was an obligation she had to satisfy. If she did not tend to Liza’s needs, then both her ideal and reality would fall apart.

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How generous does one have to be to become a mother? What attributes does a person need to represent a mother? Khaled Hosseini explores motherhood in A Thousand Splendid Suns. In this novel, Hosseini shows the archetypal satisfactory mother by showing Mariam as a supporting, playing, and caring character for Laila and the children. Mariam is seen supporting Laila, Aziza, and Zalmai throughout the novel.

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Parenting has been a long practice that desires and demands unconditional sacrifices. Sacrifice is something that makes motherhood worthwhile. The mother-child relationship can be a standout amongst the most convoluted, and fulfilling, of all connections. Women are fuel by self-sacrifice and guilt - but everyone is the better for it. Their youngsters, who feel adored; whatever is left of us, who are saved disagreeable experiences with adolescents raised without affection or warmth; and mothers most importantly.

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The Significance of Motherly Sacrifice Many people take the sacrifices that parents make for them for granted. Specifically, many mothers give up important aspects of their lives for their children. Khaled Hosseini, author of A Thousand Splendid Suns demonstrates the significance of motherly sacrifice in several different ways through Nana, Laila, and Mariam.

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The Woman Warrior is a “memoir of a girlhood among ghosts” in which Maxine Hong Kingston recounts her experiences as a second generation immigrant. She tells the story of her childhood by intertwining Chinese talk-story and personal experience, filling in the gaps in her memory with assumptions. The Woman Warrior dismantles the archetype of the typical mother-daughter relationship by suggesting that diaspora redefines archetypes by combining conflicting societal norms. A mother’s typical role in a mother-daughter relationship is one of guidance and leadership. Parents are responsible for teaching a child right from wrong and good from evil.

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The daughters are “ignorant,...unmindful of all the truths and hopes” that their mothers have brought to America. Complaining about the way their mothers are not able to understand much about the new culture they are living in, the daughters dismiss their traditional Chinese ways as “stupid,” letting the mothers think there will be no hope for the Chinese traditions to be “passed from generation to generation.” There is an indirect collision between the mothers’ generation and the generations in the future; Suyuan Woo and her friends will no longer have an effect and be valued by those generations. Daughter Rose Hsu Jordan also comes across conflicts with her husband’s Ted Jordan’s mother before the couple gets married. Ted mother’s explained to Rose that “he needed to concentrate on his medical studies before he could even think about

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1351 Words | 6 Pages

In a family there are many different roles; there's the role of the mother, the father, the child, the grandparents, then there’s the brothers and sisters. Every single one of those roles has different responsibilities. The father, according to most of society, is supposed to be the breadwinner for the family. However, nowadays the mother is actually quite capable of being the breadwinner just as much of as the father. As they work to show their children what it is to be an adult they are teaching them as well on how to be an active member of society.

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1177 Words | 5 Pages

This stark contrast of home lives showcases how different cultures approach motherhood, which really reinforces the idea of being American versus being Chinese that is explored so much in this novel. Lena desperately wants her mother to understand the expectations associated with motherhood in America, and doesn’t understand why her relationship with her mother is so much more broken than her peers’ relationships. Without these expectations from both Lena and Ying-Ying about how it is acceptable to mother, their relationship would have endured significantly less

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1225 Words | 5 Pages

“Communication is the key to a successful relationship, attentiveness, and consistency. Without it, there is no relationship,” (Bleau). The Joy Luck Club is a novel written by Amy Tan. Set in the twentieth century, this novel depicts the life of four Chinese immigrant women escaping their past and their American-grown daughters. The novel reveals the mothers’ hardship-filled past and motivations alongside with the daughters’ inner conflicts and struggles.

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1197 Words | 5 Pages

The article “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior” was written in 2011 by Amy Chua, who is a professor at Yale Law School in the United States of America. The article follows significant themes such as the upbringing of children and perfectionism. In the article, the author, Amy Chua, explains the differences between the upbringing of children by respectively Chinese parents and Western parents.

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Mothers are caring, loving, thoughtful, borchering ,and always protected from malicious people and things. These adjectives describe not only the general mother archetype, but make them significant and important. The mother archetype is one of the most important archetypes. The mother archetype stands for all mothers, and their role in playing their mothering parts. This is not only special to that archetype, but explains why it is one.

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