Resumo de The Joy Luck Club (part 2 Of Abstract)

The following story, The Red Candle, is narrated by Lindo Jong and is a sweet and sour blend of humor and sorrow involving the implications of an arranged marriage. From an early age Lindo was taught the ancient Chinese custom of a planned marriage. She was raised not as her mother?s daughter but as the daughter of someone she had yet to meet. Lindo understands this but does not understand the lack of affection her mother displays. Her mother, an old-fashioned woman, loves her daughter and hopes for her happiness but is bound by the ties of tradition and is forced to give her away. This resembles the parable, where the mother wishes only the best for her daughter but is sadly unable to show her love for her. Lindo is forced into a miserable marriage with a boy who does not have feelings for her. Theirs is a marriage without any kind of love or emotion. For many years, she suffers through it, trying to uphold her family?s honor by discarding her own happiness to fulfill the wishes of her new family. The family treats her with disdain when she does not bear babies and fails to appreciate her or her intentions. Still, she endures, accepting her life but hoping for a better one. Finally, using a little pluck and a little determination she is able to deceive herself out of the marriage and to America where there is an abundance of wealth and opportunity. She envisioned a better future for herself, just as the mother in the parable did, and as a result she was able to find her independence and true self. Now she has her own daughter who grew up the American way, whom she pours all her love and care into. Lindo does not want her to feel confused about her mother?s intentions as she once was. But the daughter does not realize this and tries to go her own way. And in doing this she is taking her mother?s hopes for her for granted. Although Lindo wanted to protect her daughter from the sufferings of her past, the lack of mutual understanding between the two put them on opposite sides of a great divide. This is an expression of the parable?s theme of communicative differences. One cannot understand the meaning of the other, and therefore neither can know more than half the truth. The unlikeness in experiences between Lindo and her daughter, along with the hopes they have for themselves and one another, are themes expressed in the original parable and found throughout the entire novel.
Last in the series of stories, is Ying-Ying St. Clair and the tale of The Moon Lady. Like the preceding stories, this one recounts the haunting childhood memories of Ying-Ying as she loses her innocence and herself. At the lakeside Moon Festival celebration, everyone is expected to go before the Moon Lady and make a wish. Before she is able to do so, Ying-Ying gets chicken blood smeared all over her new dress. She is found and stripped down to her underwear and, as a punishment, left alone on the back of the watercraft. Ying-Ying is so damaged by this action, that she has a crisis of identity and begins to change. When she falls off the boat and nearly drowns, her transition from innocence and safety to absence and corruption is completed. As she scrambles across the shore, she comes upon the Moon Lady?s performance. After it is over she goes to make her wish, and finds out that the Moon Lady is actually a man in drag. Ying-Ying is immediately crushed by this shocking discovery and in the midst of it, forgets her wish. This is a representation of the theme of appearance versus reality. In the parable, the swan was not a swan but a goose that wanted to be. In the story, the Moon Lady is not a lady but a costumed man putting up a show. What is common in both cases is that the seduction of appearance is more appealing than the hard truth of reality. Later, Ying-Ying grows up to have a daughter of her own, but still feels grief when remembering that moment in her childhood when her innocence was undone. Like the opening parable and other stories there is a gullf of reticence between them. While trying to comprehend the decisions her daughter has made in life, Ying-Ying remembers her wish from all those years ago-to be found. Although they are lost in a pool of difference, she hopes that the relationship between them will not be broken, and that they will be able to find themselves and each other again. As this fourth story ends, several themes have been developed and reinforced in relation to the parable, that sum up the whole section and are an entry into the rest of the book.
In the end, the four immigrant women are able to find an emotional catharsis in themselves, their daughters, and one another, but The Joy Luck Club is neither a Chinese story nor an American one. It is a universal human story about who we are and how we came to be that is, in the end, powerful, relevant, and moving.

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