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Promises In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

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Joy Luck Club Essay
In the book The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan speaks through the voice of Lindo Jong about how meaningful certain promises can be: “I once sacrificed my life to keep my parents’ promise” (49). In order to express this through her book, she symbolizes the gold to mean promises. Amy Tan shows how promises help bring people together, with some promises being meaningful for life by itself, while others can hardly make a difference even in great quantities. By utilizing the gold to represent promises, Amy Tan shows how having a miniscule amount of meaningful promises to fulfill will have a much better impact on the world than trying to fulfill a plethora of meaningless promises.
Throughout the book The Joy Luck Club, gold comes to represent promises. At the beginning of the chapter, The Red Candle, Lindo Jong is talking directly to Waverly about promises. She says, “and [the soldier] says, ‘Promise! Promise! Honey-sweetheart, my …show more content…

Near the end of the chapter Red Candle, Lindo Jong talks to Waverly about two of her golden bracelets: “I gave birth to your brothers and then your father gave me these two bracelets” (66). These bracelets are very little in number, but have a much deeper meaning to them. In this case, it represents the bond between mother and sons, and the promise the mother makes to the sons to take care of them. Even though there are only two bracelets, the sons’ lives behind them make them so much more valuable. In that same section of the chapter, Lindo Jong talks more about her bracelets: “[My bracelets] are always twenty-four carats, all genuine” (66). Since her promises are all completely genuine, she will always fulfill them. 24 carat gold is also very expensive, showing her will and dedication to her sons. this shows how meaningful promises, no matter how few in number, can affect the important aspects of life

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