LITERATURE ANALYSIS #1

1.  The Joy Luck by Amy Tan compares the relationship between Chinese immigrants and their mothers in China to the relationship between these Chinese immigrants and their American-born daughters.  The novel is divided into seven different perspectives: four Chinese American daughters and three Chinese mothers.  The anecdotes of both the past and the present of each of these characters fulfills that authors purpose of describing and demonstrating the similarities and differences between those two distinct relationships.

Jing-mei Woo (Daughter)

                Jing-mei Woo is the daughter of the late Suyuan Woo.  In the beginning of the novel, she takes her mother’s place at the fourth corner of a mah jong table during a Joy Luck Club meeting.  It is during a game of mah jong that her mother’s friends, An-mei, Lindo, and Ying-ying, reveal to her that the twins Suyuan abandoned in China because of times of hardship were still alive and wanted to meet Jing-mei’s mother.  They convinced Jing-mei to go to China to meet them instead.

                When Jing-mei was a little girl, her mother wanted her to be a prodigy in something, and the only activity Jing-mei could get away with was playing the piano because her teacher was deaf.  She ended up embarrassing her mother at a talent show by playing badly. 

                Another flashback describes the superstitions of Chinese culture when her mother wouldn’t buy or eat a crab with a missing leg at a New Year’s dinner.  After the crab dinner, however, her mother gave her a jade pendant and said it was Jing-mei’s life importance.

                In the end of the novel, Jing-mei travels to China and meets her half-sisters.  She doesn’t understand what it means for her to be Chinese until she meets these family members, and they all already feel connected to one another because they reflect their mother.

Suyuan Woo (Mother)

                Suyuan married an army officer, and while she was in an impoverished refugee city, she came up with the concept of the Joy Luck Club in China so that the members could take a day from their miserable lives to actually live.  When the Japanese attacked, Suyuan left with her baby twin daughters and walked for miles to find a safe city.  Along the way, she had to leave the daughters on the side of the road because she felt that there was more hope that they would be found and taken care of than there was that they would survive another day’s journey.  She never stopped looking for them in the years before her death, and one of her friends located them just after her death.

An-mei Hsu (Mother)

                An-mei’s mother was forced into becoming a concubine to a wealthy man after her husband died.  An-mei lived with her mother for a short time in this wealthy man’s large house, after living with her aunt and uncle as a child.  A son that her mother had with the man was taken by one of the other wives to care for.  Her mother poisoned herself to escape her miserable life, and An-mei was raised by the wealthy man who wanted to please her mother’s spirit.

Rose Hsu Jordan (Daughter)

                When Rose was fourteen, her mother told her to watch her four little brothers at a family trip to the beach.  When the three older brothers were fighting, her mother told her to break up their fight, and as a result, she took her eyes off of her youngest brother who fell off of the reef and into the ocean.  They never found his body.

                As an adult, she went through a divorce with a husband who was cheating on her.  She finally followed her mother’s advice and decided to fight for the house, instead of giving it all away to her husband.

Lindo Jong (Mother)

                Lindo Jong was committed to an arranged marriage in China when she was two and married to the suitor when she was sixteen.  She escaped from that dreadful marriage through a cunning plot that took advantage of the Chinese reverence to their ancestors.  By lying about a dream where the ancestors disapproved of her marriage, she was free to travel to America years later.  There, she worked in a fortune cookie factory, and took the advice of someone in China to marry a man and have an anchor baby.  She was Suyuan Woo’s best friend, but the two friends competed against each other with their daughters’ accomplishments, Jing-mei and Waverly.

Waverly Jong (Daughter)

                When Waverly was a little girl, she was a chess champion.  One day, she became embarrassed at how her mother wouldn’t stop telling others about her accomplishments and taking the credit for them, so she took a break from chess and couldn’t win one tournament when she started playing again.

                As an adult, she had a daughter named Shoshana with her first husband who she later divorced, and then she worked up the courage to tell her mother that she was engaged to a man named Rich Shields.  Waverly is resistant to embrace her Chinese heritage.

Ying-ying St. Clair (Mother)

               When she was a little girl, she fell into a river during the Moon Festival in China, and she was lost for most of the night.  She wished to the Moon Lady to be found, and in the morning her family found her.  Her childhood innocence was crushed, though, because she found the person who played the Moon Lady in a skit, only she was actually a he.

                She grew up in a wealthy family, and was forced to marry a man who left her pregnant a couple of months later to pursue an opera singer.  She had an abortion, and she went to work as a shop attendant in a poorer district.  There, she met Mr. St. Clair, and she went with him to America to get married.

                She had Lena, and then she gave birth a few years later to a stillborn son.  She showed Chinese superstition once again in the book when she claimed that her son didn’t survive because the house was slanted so he fell out of her womb too quickly.

Lena St. Clair (Daughter)

                Lena St. Clair grew up listening to a fighting mother and daughter on the other side of her bedroom wall every night.  She also didn’t eat all of her rice, and so she was told that she would have a bad husband.

                She married a man named Harold, and they split the cost of everything that they bought and shared.  Eventually, she decided to leave the marriage, after her mother enlightened her to how miserable she actually was in that marriage.  Lena’s mother didn’t want her daughter to experience the same kind of marriage she had experienced when she was young.

 

2.  The theme of the novel is the divergence of Chinese and American cultures over generations of Chinese-American families resulting in a Chinese culture that is only present in elders.  Throughout the book, the mothers' perspectives often comment on how Americanized their daughters are.  Lindo Jong once states, "I wanted my children to have the best combination: American circumstances and Chinese character.  How could I know these two things do not mix?"  This statement is the perfect reflection of this theme.

 

3.  The author's tone is reflective and nostalgic.  The reflective tone results from the constant storytelling by the characters of their past tragedies or accomplishments, and from the way she writes the character's thoughts such as, "Yet today I can remember a time when I ran and shouted," (Page 64) or "But now that I am old, moving every year closer to the end of my life, I also feel closer to the beginning." (Page 83)  I believe the author has a nostalgic tone because she seems to be reflecting her mistakes and former beliefs through the daughters that she characterized in the novel.  This came to mind because her biography says that her parents immigrated from China before she was born in Oakland, California.

4.  Imagery- "The same turquoise couch shaped in a semicircle of nubby tweed.  The colonial end tables made out of heavy maple.  A lamp of fake cracked porcelain.  Only the scroll-length calendar, free from the Bank of Canton, changes every year." (Page 16)
"I see a short bent woman in her seventies, with a heavy bosom and thin, shapeless legs.  She has the flattened soft fingertips of an old woman." (Page 19)
Historical Allusion/Extended Metaphor for the civil war in China that resulted in a communist government: "But they can do something else.  Now they no longer have to swallow their own tears or suffer the taunts of magpies.  I know this because I read this news in a magazine from China.  It said that for thousands of years birds had been tormenting peasants...when the people stood up, the birds would fly down and drink the tears and eat the seeds...But one day, all these tired peasants...they gathered in fields everywhere...they began to clap their hands, and bang sticks on pots and pans...and all these birds rose in the air, alaramed and confused by this new anger...waiting for the noise to stop...And this continued...until all those birds...fluttered to the ground, dead and still, until not one bird remained in the sky."  (Page 273)
Repetition to emphasize the importance of the subject the character is addressing:  "Something was always missing.  Something always needed improving.  Something was not in balance."  (Page 19)
"They see their own daughters...they see daughters who grow impatient when their mothers talk in Chinese...they see that joy and luck do not mean the same to their daughters...they see daughters who will bear grandchildren born without any connecting hop passed from generation to generation." (Page 31)
Rhetorical Questions to provide a better sense of the natural thought process in someone's mind:  "Even if I had not wanted to marry, where would I go live instead? Even though I was as strong as a horse, how could I run away?"  (Page 51)
"What would your psychiatrist say if I told him that I shouted for joy when I read that this had happened?"  (Page 273)
"Why did I marry this man?"  (Page 278)
Similes allow the reader to picture concepts in a new way:  "Its walls close in like a coffin."  (Page 275)
"All of us are like stairs, one step after another, going up and down, but all going the same way."  (Page 241)
"It is like looking into a bowl and finding the last grains of rice you did not finish."  (Page 280)
Metaphor:  "I rubbed out my face over the years washing away my pain, the same way carvings on stone are worn down by water."  (Page 64)
Hyperbole:  "And because I moved so secretly now my daughter does not see me."  (Page 64)
Dialect to demonstrate the broken English of the mothers and the difference between their fluency in the Chinese language and their fluency in the English language:  "You a smart girl.  You watch us, do the same.  Help us stack the tiles and make four walls."  (Page 23)
"Aii-ya, Mrs. Emerson good lady."  (Page 24)
Irony when Waverly's fiancée has good intentions, but they backfire:  "But the worst was when Rich criticized my mother's cooking, and he didn't even know what he had done.  As is the Chinese cook's custom, my mother always made disparaging remarks about her own cooking...'Ai! This dish not salty enough, no flavor,' she complained, after tasting a small bite...This was our family's cue to eat some and proclaim it the best she had ever made.  But before we could do so, Rich said, 'You know, all it needs is a little soy sauce.' And he proceeded to pour a riverful of the salty black stuff on the platter, right before my mother's horrified eyes."  (Page 197)
Foreshadowing to the subject of the anecdote that the character is about to mention:  "It is my earliest recollection: telling the Moon Lady my secret wish.  And because I forgot what I wished for, that memory remained hidden from me all these many years.  But now I remember the wish, and I can recall the details of that entire day..."  (Page 65)

ALL OF THE ABOVE

Regarding the multiple choice section of the 1987 practice AP exam, I got 33 out of 47 correct.  Maybe I need to give myself more credit for what I know because I set my expectations at getting half of the questions correct.  I know my results aren't the best results they could be, but I am still happy and surprised at them in a good way.  My perspective is that this was my first taste of the AP English Literature exam and so hopefully I can only improve from here on.  You aren't ready for a race until you've conditioned for it over time.  Most of the questions that I got wrong were a mixture of those with the I, II, III, IV options that you mix and match, and those that contained vocabulary terms about poetry that were unfamiliar to me, and so I couldn't answer the question to the best of my ability.

Vocabulary #4

accolade: any award, honor, or laudatory notice; a touch on the shoulder with a sword during a knighthood ceremony
The hard-working student received the accolade of an AP Scholar because of her test scores.

acerbity: sourness, with roughness of taste; harshness or severity in temper or expression
His acerbity towards others didn't earn him many friends.

attrition: a decrease in numbers, size, or strength; the wearing down or weakening of resistance
His developing attrition towards his daily routine caused him to have a mid-life crisis.

bromide:  a platitude or trite saying; a person who is platitudinous and boring
His speech was full of so many bromides that the audience didn't hear anything that they hadn't heard before.

chauvinist: a person who aggressively and blindly patriotic; a person who believes one gender is superior to the other
The male chauvinist thought it was a mistake that women were granted the right to vote, and he actively stated so to his wife.

chronic: constant; habitual; recurring frequently
Her chronic back pain made her go see her doctor for some medication to help get rid of it.

expound: to state in detail; to explain; to interpret
He expounded his flaws to prove that he wasn't perfect.

factionalism: of a faction or factions; self-interested; partisan
The factionalism present in Congress prevented the passing of an important bill.

immaculate: spotlessly clean; pure; free from errors
She wanted her house to be immaculate before her critical mother arrived.

imprecation: the act of cursing; a curse; malediction
She was so angry that she screamed as many imprecations as she could at her parents.

ineluctable: inescapable; incapable of being evaded
The conversation about future colleges with his parents was ineluctable to the high school senior.'

mercurial: volatile; erratic; flighty; animated; lively; quick-witted
Her mercurial personality was too much for her friends to handle.

palliate: mitigate; alleviate; to relieve or lessen without curing
Her doctor attempted to palliate the chronic pain in her back with a prescription for a pain killer.

protocol: the regulations and customs dealing with formality, precedence, and etiquette
The little boy didn't follow the protocol of the classroom when he insisted on answering the question without raising his hand.

resplendent: shining brilliantly; gleaming; splendid
She looked resplendent on her wedding day as she walked down the aisle

stigmatize: to set some mark of disgrace or infamy upon; to mark with a stigma or brand
Her charges of theft stigmatized the family in the town.

sub rosa: confidentially; secretly; privately
She was kept the family matters sub rosa at the request of her parents.

vainglory: excessive elation and pride over one's achievements; empty pomp or show
His vainglory over his acceptance into Harvard University made his parents turn from feeling proud of his accomplishment to embarrassed by his blatant arrogance.

vestige: the mark, trace, or evidence of something that no longer exists; a slight trace or amount
The fighting couple was hoping they could still find some vestiges of happiness in their marriage.

volition: the act of willing, choosing, or resolving; a decision made by will
She returned to her husband of her own volition after they had separated.

BEOWULF ESSAY

     What defines a hero? Usually a hero is closely associated with the protagonist of a tale, the "good guy" that the audience is intended to sympathize with and support.  Typically, heroes save innocent people from death at the hands of the antagonist, and the background of the antagonist isn't normally explained in detail to better facilitate a connection between the deeper character of the hero and the audience  rather than one between the hero's enemy and the audience.  Often, a hero is who everyone aspires to be, and consequently, a hero's actions and beliefs can mirror the culture of the time period in which the story was created.  The classic hero Beowulf and the modern hero Luke Skywalker share similarities in character as heroes, but distinctions are also apparent between each hero and how they relate to the time periods in which they were written.

     In the epic poem Beowulf, the main character of the story, Beowulf, is the epitome of a hero according to the culture of the time period in which Beowulf was created.  Not only is he loyal to his king and the Danish king Hrothgar, an important value of his time, but he is also portrayed as self-confident, to a degree of slight arrogance, and accomplishes feats of strength in battle that lead to numerous victories against monsters terrorizing a kingdom.  This is comparable to the modern hero Luke Skywalker from the Star Wars series of movies from the 1970's.  Luke Skywalker doesn't have the strong self-confidence that Beowulf displays, but he fulfills the status quo of a hero who protects the innocent and fights evil when he volunteers to help destroy the Death Star, a sinister weapon of the Dark Side. 

     Both Luke Skywalker and Beowulf represent the religious influences of their time.  Beowulf's belief in God was influenced by the introduction of Christianity to the Anglo-Saxons in the fourth century as the tale of Beowulf was being transmitted orally from one generation to the next.  His belief is first alluded to when he proclaims that " 'God must decide/Who will be given to death's cold grip,' " prior to his battle with Grendel, which he plans to win without armor or a weapon.  Beowulf again mentions God when he says on his deathbed, " 'I thank/Our Father in Heaven, Ruler of the Earth-/For all of this, that His grace has given me.' "  Both of these textual examples demonstrate the importance of religious hero in the society of the creators of the epic.  Luke Skywalker, on the other hand, was guided in his endeavors by his belief in the Force, a concept that symbolized the renewed sense of Mother Earth as a power which exists in everyone that surfaced in the 1970's in the United States. 

     In addition, the actions of the characters Beowulf and Luke Skywalker in their respective stories reflect the idealistic views of both time periods that good will always triumph over evil.  This is evident when Beowulf succeeds in killing Grendel to save the banquet hall Heorot from Grendel's murderous rampages at night.  Beowulf saves the king's officials by ridding the kingdom of the beast and later, by killing Grendel's mother as well.  In relation, Luke Skywalker saves innocent lives also when he helps to destroy the Death Star of the Empire before it destroyed an inhabited planet.  In the end, he also rescues his father, Darth Vader, from the Dark Side by seeing a sliver of good left in him and reaching out to it.  The Dark Side, which is correlated to the evil Empire, could be a symbol of the communist and totalitarian governments present in the 1970's because the 1970's was in the middle of the Cold War between the democratic form of government that existed in the United States and the communist form of government that existed in the Soviet Union at the time.  The Soviet Union was seen as an oppressive enemy by the United States and consequently, by many Americans, which may have helped them relate to the cause of Luke Skywalker to stop the Empire.

     Beowulf and Luke Skywalker were both heroes whose courage saved the lives of many in their epics, and whose values represented the values of the culture of their creators.  Beowulf's apparent invincibility as a brave warrior was meant to inspire children and townspeople to the dream that loyalty and greatness can come from physical and religious strength.  Luke Skywalker's journey in Star Wars, which was released after the bicentennial of the United States, was intended to access the patriotism of its audience by showing the success of a group of rebels that Luke Skywalker was part of in overthrowing a totalitarian government, similar to the ideals of the American Revolution.  The gloriously portrayed lives of heroes are fabricated to provide an escape for the audience from their own seemingly monotonous lives, and a larger-than-life figure to look up to when their lives get difficult.

WILL STUDY FOR FOOD

I think the Santa Maria Valley Chamber of Commerce Scholarship is worth applying for.  I heard about it through the handouts at College Boot Camp.  I need scholarship funds to attend a college where I think is a great place for my education to continue, so I don't have to settle going to a college that is affordable but that I can barely stand.  It may be a high goal, but I am going to set my total fundraising goal at $7,500 in scholarships.

Vocabulary #3

apostate: a person who renounces a religious or political belief; abandoning a religious principle
An apostate could be someone who has committed blasphemy against the Church.

effusive: lacking reserve; overly demonstrative; overflowing; pouring out
His effusive salutations were a  too much for a funeral reception.

impasse: a situation from which there is no escape; a deadlock; a road that has no outlet
The two arguing brothers found that they were at an impasse when neither would compromise on their share of the chores.

euphoria: a state of intense happiness and self-confidence; a feeling of well-being
The couple was filled with euphoria on their wedding day.

lugubrious: mournful; dismal; gloomy, especially in an unrelieved manner
The poet wrote many poems regarding his lugubrious childhood as an orphan.

bravado: a pretentious, swaggering display of courage
The hero's bravado when dealing with his enemies was admirable but somewhat annoying.

consensus: majority of opinion; general agreement or concord; harmony
The consensus of the class was that the homework assignment was not relevant to the course material.

dichotomy: division into two parts; division into two contradictory groups
A dichotomy exists between people that believe that children are born evil and those that believe children are raised to be evil through the environment.

constrict: compress; cause to contract or shrink; to slow the natural development of
Listening to loud music constricted her ability to read her book.

gothic: pertaining to a style of architecture originating in France in the 12th century; characterized by the use of the pointed arch and the ribbed vault
The mansion had a gothic feel to it, with both arches and spires as part of its architecture.

punctilio: a fine point, particular, or detail referring to conduct; strictness in the observance of formalities
His attention to punctilios during the ceremony took too long and annoyed everyone.

metamorphosis: complete change of form or in appearance or character
His metamorphosis from a high school drop out to the highest achiever in his class shocked everyone.

raconteur: a person who is skilled in relating stories and anecdotes interestingly
He was a such an excellent raconteur that he could make a trip to the grocery store sound like the most interesting story you have ever heard of the time.

sine qua non: an indispensable condition, element, or factor; something essential
Graduating from at least high school is seen as the sin qua non for getting a job in life with a livable salary.

quixotic: extravagantly romantic; impractical; impulsive; rashly unpredictable
Even though the student knew that the assignment was non-negotiable, he felt a quixotic urge to argue with the teacher to cancel the project.

vendetta: prolonged and bitter feud or rivalry
The Capulets had a vendetta with the Montagues in the play Romeo and Juliet.

non sequitur: a statement containing an illogical conclusion; an inference that doesn't follow from the premises
He came to non sequitur conclusion that rabbits are humans through the premises that rabbits have ears, and all humans have ears

mystique: a framework of doctrines, ideas, and beliefs constructed around a person or object
The mystique of the universe can be time consuming when thought about.

quagmire: a bog; a situation from which extrication is difficult; anything soft or flabby
She found herself in a quagmire when she missed her stop to get off of the bus, and the next stop was in the neighboring state.

parlous: perilous; dangerous; clever; shrewd
The parlous career path as a police officer can be very stressful.

WHY THIS BOOK?

I chose The Joy Luck Club for a couple of reasons.  The first one is that I looked for books that I already had in my house.  I decided from that pile to read The Joy Luck Club because I remembered reading an excerpt from it in junior high school, and I have heard a lot of good things about it from friends that read it for  one of the reading groups in Mrs. Byrne's class.