Different Characterizations of the Joy Luck Club

Like the various shapes of the grains of rice in a bowl, Amy Tan's novel, "The Joy Luck Club," portrays many characters that are all unique and different from each other. However, there is one family that stood out from the other three; Jing-mei and Suyuan Woo were significantly unique. The problems that they faced, family history, and the literary style used for their stories were some of the noticeable differences.

When reading through the novel, an interesting feature about Jing-mei is that she's the only one who was not married and had marital problems like the other three daughters. While this may not seem like such a big deal at first, but by the end of the book, it really makes Jing-mei a unique character. Instead of giving her problems with marriage, Tan gives Jing-mei a different problem and obstacle to face¡ªthe responsibility to carry out her mother's longest hopes of finding her lost daughters.[1] This allows the reader to pay more attention to the story of Jing-mei because it is a twist from the rest of the other stories. Not only is Jing-mei singled out by her problems, she is also singled out by the other three daughters. Her incapability of speaking Chinese is often times ridiculed throughout her life yet she is representing the telling of her mother's story.

Suyuan's main difference from the rest of the mothers is that she's dead throughout the book. The readers never get to experience her personal thoughts about various situations throughout the book. She is just a figure referred to with a lot of respect. The other mother's problems were trying to cope with their daughters and push them to be the best they could be. Suyuan also did this, but to her dismay, Jing-mei didn't turn out to be any sort of prodigy. However, Suyuan had another purpose for pushing Jing-mei so hard. Sure there was the usual reason of trying to give her daughter a better life than she had, but she was also pushing her because she had cast all of her hopes for her two daughters into Jing-mei.[2] At the same time, she has always been looking for her lost daughters until she died.