Joy Luck Club

Cole Hinterlong
Mrs. Rauen
Enriched Written
2/25/11

The Failures of Love

      “A mother's treasure is her daughter” -Catherine Pulsife.   In Amy Tan’s, The Joy Luck Club, the themes of a shared love and a strong sense of family and heritage, of mothers to their daughters, are commonly repeated throughout.   The mothers in the story come from China with a troubled past and as a result do everything in their power to keep their daughters from going through the same problems and give them a better life.   However, the daughters are slow to realize this.   In An-Mei’s quest to protect Rose from having a troubled life, she ends up shaping Rose into a spineless, fragile person that cannot stand on her own.
      An-Mei’s experiences as a child cause her to become an overbearing mother.   When An-Mei was a child in China, she was told that “her mother was a ghost” (Tan 42), meaning that her mother had done something so horrible that she was not allowed to be spoken to by anyone.   Because she was not able to have a relationship with her mother, and her grandmother wanted her to forget she even had a mother, An-Mei grew up without a parent figure in her life.   The only parent-like figure she had in her life was her grandmother, Popo, who told her stories to scare her into being obedient.   One story was of a girl who “refused to listen to her elders.   One day this bad girl shook her head so vigorously to refuse her auntie’s simple request that a little white ball fell from her ear and poured out all her brains, as clear s chicken broth” (43).   This story was created to make An-Mei think that if she disobeyed her elders, her brains would pour out.   Because of this, she learned to always listen and obey what Popo told her.   This is a foreshadowing to the type of parent An-Mei will eventually become.
      An-Mei’s parenting style of an overbearing mother is introduced when her daughter, Rose, is also introduced to the story.   Rose is portrayed as an extremely... [continues]

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