Change In The Joy Luck Club

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To demonstrate character change within Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, values is emphasized in the novel to accentuate the importance of winning and losing. The Joy Luck Club revolves around the game of mah jong and how it brings the Aunties together for a night of happiness and pleasure. Although played as a gateway from negativities, there was a reoccuring obstruction causing discontent. Winning or losing in a game built the idea of survival and created the “...view of the loser as a victim who fails to survive, and belief that one should make every effort to defend oneself against the bruising experience of being a loser” (Xu 10). The same people would win and lose because no luck is a match compared to skill. As a solution, the Aunties came …show more content…
Tan was able to incorporate Chinese beliefs such as Feng Shui and Chinese astrology. Respectively, the Five Elements is another belief exemplified within the characters of the novel. The Five Elements is an addition to the Chinese zodiac, where too little fire means you have too much temper, too much water means, too much wind means, and so on. For Rose, she composed of too much wood. Her mother, An-mei, has constantly told her how she must not be influenced by others opinions. Due to Roses preference to the American custom, her ignorance allowed others to get the best of her. Roses choice of the American lifestyle over the Chinese way became overwhelming with too many options. Thus the lack of wood allowed her to be too lenient “Born without wood so that I listened to too many people...There were too many choices, so it was easy to get confused and pick the wrong thing” (Tan 108). When Rose finally recognizes her mother's forecast of the future, Rose understands divorcing her husband was her fate and not due to the lack of hope, “An-mei believes life is determined by fate, by immutable celestial forces...sees fate as having a participatory element. Earthly matters admit the influence of human agency” (Hamilton 12). Seeing that Rose leaned every which way to listen to everyone's opinions, she allowed herself to become a wilting weed instead of a tall, strong
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