Shame In The Joy Luck Club And Flight

Shame is a very powerful and social emotion that has been also classified as a form of physical pain. According to Alan Fogel, Ph.D., “When people feel emotional pain, the same areas of the brain get activated as when people feel physical pain…” Additionally, it requires an audience: someone cannot actually experience shame without having people around them. Shame is an evident theme that occurs frequently in the novels: The Joy Luck Club and Flight. It is apparent in both literary works that shame is universal. It embraces both genders and all cultures. Shame crosses all borders and generations. More specifically, just how it affects the relationships between the mothers and daughters in The Joy Luck Club, and how Sherman Alexie portrays Zits in the book Flight. Zits is humiliated by the blood shared between him and his father.
In The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan writes about the intergenerational struggle between the mothers and daughters. This emcompasses the daughters’ modern day life complications such as marriage and money and the mother's old-fashioned wishes such as, following parental orders and honoring the family. Based on the following quote the theme of shame is crystal clear: “But my mother's expression was what devastated me: a quiet, blank look that said she had lost everything” (Tan 140). Jing-Mei Woo had failed her

Zits remembers as an eight year old, “...my new father took me into another dark room in the basement, one without any trains, and did evil things to me. Things that hurt.” (Alexie 75). This abuse he experienced from his stepfather made it impossible to feel self worth. It caused him great degradation. He was just a boy, an innocent victim with no one to console him or counsel him. His sense of shame dragged him down into a lower state of mind. The abuser, who one might think would have been his salvation, instead became a monster and betrayed his