The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan was a book about life's hardships shaping the person you are. It reviews the stories of a group of young women and the struggles that formed their personalities, then it recites the heart-shattering recollections of their mothers. All stories weave together to make a quilt of obstacles, destiny, and the will to overcome.
Each mother originated in Asia and each one tells the story of how they ended up in America. Each mother holds secrets of their past close, and each has a very traditional approach to parenting for a Chinese woman. The daughters of these inspiring women have their own struggles in life, but theirs may be much more relatable and modern to the average American. The mothers had to endure war, arranged marriage, and traditional Chinese customs; the daughters faced different distractions such as divorce, college, and jobs. This all presents the theme: even family can often misunderstand another because they have not experience life the same way another did.
The tone of the novel took on a sympathetic but prideful tone; the reader had no choice but to ache over the hardships of these women, but the women always carried a very proud demeanor. The story itself leaned toward the melancholy side; encouraging, in the end, to all readers. An example of his pride would be on page 224 stating, "satisfied she had put him in his place."
Amy Tan uses foreshadowing when June received the letter from her half-sisters inquiring about their mother. In her mother's story she left two twins on the side of the road in a desperate attempt keep herself and them alive, because of this letter the reader's inferred that the twins were June's sisters and that they had obviously made it out of the war alive. She also use allusion in plenty of the mother's stories to tie the war and the dynasty rulers into the novel. Tan used cacophony when telling Lena's story of how her mother lost her baby at birth. She also uses a euphemism in this story when Lena described her mother as having gone crazy instead of a medical term for mentally insane. This whole novel is made up of flashbacks from eight different women.
Amy Tan had a pattern to which she used direct characterization when a daughter described her mother, but tended use indirect characterization to develop the mother's character in her own story. She often changes diction and syntax throughout each individual story to mirror the personality and characteristics of that individual character. Each main character, the eight women, are round characters; they develop throughout their stories, especially from the mother's story through the daughter's. After reading this book I felt like I had heard each story by the women themselves, the alternating diction and syntax played a great role in this, I believe.
