The Different Facets of Characters
The different perspectives writers put into their stories give readers a more complete understanding of the characters. In Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, Rose Hsu Jordan constantly refuses to confide in her mother, An-mei Hsu, about her divorce, choosing to talk to a psychiatrist instead, while her mother wants to help her. Both mother and daughter have experienced a tragedy involving death in their pasts, which leads to how they act in the present. However, when Rose goes through more serious conflicts during her adulthood, she often looks to others for help instead of her family. Her opinion of her mother changes from admiration when she was a child, to the opposite in her adulthood. Tan’s use of multiple …show more content…
In An-mei’s case, she almost became this way when she received the string of fake pearls from Second Wife, but she learned to be independent when her mother died. When Rose was young, by the time her mother told her she was without wood, she was already influenced by what her teacher taught her and started shutting her mother out. Looking back on that time, she said, “I still listened to my mother, but I also learned how to let her words blow through me. And sometimes I filled my mind with other people’s thoughts - all in English - so that when she looked at me inside out, she would be confused by what she saw.” (191) Even though Rose heard what her mother was saying, she did not take her words seriously. Instead, she listened to what others said and ignored her mother. When debating what to do about her divorce with Ted, Rose said, “I had been talking to too many people…. To each person I told a different story. Yet each version was true, I was certain of it, at least at the moment I that I told it.” (188-189) She keeps telling different stories because even she was not sure of what to make of the situation. Her indecisiveness since she was young caused her to continue questioning herself about whether she would make the right judgement without professional