...Luck or Opportunity "Luck is a matter of preparation meeting opportunity” is a quote from Oprah Winfrey, a famous American talk show host. The speaker is trying to tell people that good preparation for opportunity is the key to be successful, not luck. Luck is really being ready for something, perhaps unconsciously, so that you recognize it when you see it. When whatever it is comes along, it will seem to be a stroke of luck, but in reality it is not luck at all. It is something you have strived and worked towards, maybe without even knowing it, so that when it presents itself it seems second nature. I agree with Winfrey because I believe that preparation is more important. My agreement is based on the following reasons. The first reason is that opportunity is very transient and rare, so we must grab it whenever we meet it. In my opinion, grabbing opportunity means to get ready and be well-prepared. Take Oprah Winfrey for example. Before she became a well-known national TV host, she worked in a local station for many years and had gone to uncountable interviews. Without her experiences, she could not have gotten the interview for national TV host and become successful. Second, preparation is always advantageous and never harmful to us. Preparation requires motivation, activity and carefulness. Those who most frequently experience outcomes viewed by society as unlucky live lives which exhibit little evidence of motivation, activity and care. When preparing for something...
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...“Luck, Greed & Money” Success or failure brought by chance rather than through one’s own actions is Luck; which Hester understands but still is not willing to give up their luxurious lifestyle. D. H. Lawrence describes their living style in “The Rocking-Horse Winner,” in a pleasant house, with a garden and servants to feel superior to anyone in the neighborhood. Hester marries for love, and it turns into dust. She had two little girls and a boy, whom she tells that luck is everything, and her “good luck” is ruined by her husband’s “bad luck.” They did not live a poor life style, but Hester is to compete with other families by having the best and most stylish living. She is always looking for ways to earn more money, but fails. This greed was turning Hester into a Heartless mother, she complains about not having enough money that the house starts to echo the phrase, "There must be more money!" This statement caused her son Paul, feel the need to help find more money. He does this by gambling with the gardener at the horse race track and wins a lot of money. As he wants to start giving his mother some of the money on yearly basis, she ends up wanting it all. The more she gets, the more she wants, without realizing where it was coming from. Everyone in the neighborhood thinks Hester is a good mother, who adores her children, but only she and the kids knew that it wasn’t true. She always showed love to her kids but could not feel it in her heart because there wasn’t enough...
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...The title of Amy Tan’s novel, Two Kinds (Tan, 2009), is a reference to two different kinds of daughter, as defined by the narrators mother (Tan, 2009, p. 412). One kind, the obedient daughter, embraces her mother’s wishes and willingly follows the path the mother has chosen for her. The other kind, the disobedient daughter, rejects her mother’s wishes and willfully follows the path she has chosen for herself. I really had a difficult time with part two of question number one. From my perspective, there was no discernible connection between the first sentence of the story; “My mother believed you could be anything you wanted to be in America” (Tan, 2009, p. 405) and the last sentence of the story; “And after I played them both a few times, I realized they were two halves of the same song” (Tan, 2009, p. 414). I believe that in the beginning, Jing-mei felt her mother was selfish, in her determination to mold her daughter into a piano prodigy. However, in the end she realizes that it was Mrs. Woo’s faith in her daughter’s potential that motivated her to push so hard (SparkNotes Editors, 2003). Furthermore, I think that for Jing-Mei, the piano was a symbol of her mother’s expectations, than disappointment and ultimately rejection, in the beginning of the story. By the end of the story, the piano becomes a symbol of Mrs. Woo’s acceptance (Tan, 2009, p. 413). This was essentially the lesson Jing-Mei had to learn in order to find inner peace. Jing-Mei briefly refers...
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...The Joy Luck Club: The Generation Gap “The old woman remembered a swan she had bought many years ago in Shanghai for a foolish sum. This bird, boasted the market vendor, was once a duck that stretched its neck in hopes of becoming a goose, and now look!—it is too beautiful to eat.” (The Joy Luck Club). The Joy Luck Club, written by Amy Tan, takes you on a rollercoaster ride of emotions with the heartbreaking truth of the harsh realities of the world around us. Bringing serious topics to the attention of her audience, she is informing them through her work, what the hardships of life are. As this story progresses, the viewer will see a various amount of themes, but the generation gap is visibly present. With her mother nearly dying,...
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...Amy Tan’s novel, The Joy Luck Club uses much characterization. Each character is portrayed in different yet similar ways. When she was raised, she would do whatever she could to please other people. She even “gave up her life for her parents promise” (49), I the story The Red Candle we get to see how Tan portrays Lindo Jong and how she is brought to life. Tan likes to show Lindo through indirect characterization. Lindo would always try to make things right. She would be polite to her new mother in law and when she was with her mother in law she would hold out a treat and say “ For you, Mother” (53). Even though Huang Taitai was not her real mother, Lindo would act as though she was, but before Lindo did this she would turn to her mother and ask for forgivness. This shows that she is a caring girl and she will always try to behave and be nice to every one. Tan also shows us how brave Lindo is. When it came time for the family to leave for shanghai, it was said that “the whole family except for Lindo would leave” (53). Lindo didn’t say a word. When the day finnaly came, no one said goodbye. All that was said was, “do not disgrace us” When Lindo arrived, she wasn’t given a celebration or anything. She went straight to the kithchen and started to work. Even though Lindo really missed her family, she knew that she had to stay and keeo her parent’s honor. This still shows that she was brave, that she is not a selfish girl. She is determined to please others. When Lindo saw her...
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...Amy Tan’s novel Joy Luck Club, illustrate the life of four Chinese mothers and daughters and also the conflict between Chinese and American culture. Even if they all are Chinese, the daughters are born and raised in America, they don’t have the same miserable, desperate and hard life as there mother had back in China. The point of view of the mothers and daughters is very different in the story. All the daughters think about if their Chinese culture might have created problems for them, neither of the daughters can deny their mother nor their culture, but they all do have some issues about their mother attitude and ambition. For example Jing-Mei she was forced to play piano, “my mother believed you could be anything you want in America” (p.132: Two Kinds) and show the talent and the concern that she didn’t had, and also she was always compared with Waverley’s success. Even if Waverley was successful in chess game she also had problems with her mothers affected conduct, "Why do you have to use me to show off? If you want to show off, then why don't you learn to play chess.” ( p.99: Rules of the Game). Of course Jing-Mei and Waverly are not the only one to suffer their mothers ambition for their future but they are the one whom mothers were competing in a secret and discreet way. This shows the Chinese personality mothers. Beside these two cases the other personalities that Chinese mothers have are that they don’t want their daughter to marry an American man because they...
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...The film The Joy Luck club presents the life story of four Chinese women that influences their American daughters to fight for their own existence, respect, and worth in the society. The film brings the harsh realities of Chinese culture by revealing the past lifestyle of four Asian women in China. The four women named Suyuan, Ying-Yang, An-Mei, and Lindo migrates to America after swallowing the miserable experience of their life in China. In San Francisco, they started a club known as The Joy Luck Club, where they share their stories while playing mahjong. At the end, the stories of their own mother help their daughters to learn not to get suppressed under the cultural complexities of the society and to stand for their own identity. The cultural aspect of the film The Joy Luck club that expanded my understanding of Chinese culture is the marriage system, the belief in obedience, and the patriarchal society. The film exposes wicked marriage system followed by Chinese culture. Some of the beliefs imposed by the society seem to be extremely disturbing and idiotic such as child marriage. The film also gives us an insight of the Chinese marriage ceremony, where the bride and groom...
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...In Amy Tan’s 1989 novel The Joy Luck Club, the author utilizes symbols and juxtaposition to show the importance of heritage and their mother-daughter bond in the novel. In the chapter Double Face, Lindo reflects on her circumstances that led her to America and her wish for her daughter to become different from her, along with her relationship and how out of touch she thinks she is with her daughter, but comes to realize that they are both very similar women and that they both have influenced each other more than they have realized. Tan particularly brings up the women’s noses to use as a symbol of their relationship as mother and daughter. When looking at themselves in the mirror, Lindo recalls a memory of when she broke her nose after arriving...
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...In the short story In The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan shows us how Jing-Mei develops, interacts with other characters, and advances throughout the course of the text. Out of the four families Jing-Mei learned valuable lessons from her mother. Her and her mother experienced many thing from her mother leaving her baby sisters, to her trying to become a prodigy, from her learning things that would help her later, and meeting her sisters even though her mother was not able to. The main character Jing-Mei learns important lesson and gradually changes from being confused like she just thought she couldn’t be nothing better than the way she already was so she didn’t try very hard to developing into trying and doing things that would help her like...
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...In the book The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, several characters face relationship issues due to family or internal issues. These conflicts could be due to elemental imbalances between the characters, so eBalance would be the ideal app for them to find love. In order to persuade the characters to join eBalance, an advertisement was created with rhetorical devices that convince the characters to use the product by appealing to the ideals they sought while giving them an option that their parents would approve of. Palilogy supports the purpose of connecting the word ‘balance’ to the name of the product as well as the five elements, “wood, fire, water...earth, [and] metal,” and also to the service itself (63). Through repetition, it emphasizes the...
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...Ever struggle with your mom or dad? Well, ‘Rules of the game’, a snippet from the book ‘The Joy Luck Club’ has many themes, and that is one of them!. From selfishness and being greedy, to ignoring Waverly’s, the main character's, family. Waverly has no trouble with thinking properly at the beginning but falls short at the end when she argues with her family. Keeping this up, Waverly becomes self-absorbed by the end. That is why I believe that the author thinks that people should think before they act. By how she acts normally, and how she changes, you can tell the author must’ve wanted something mental to be going on inside of Waverly’s head. Waverly thinks before she acts at the beginning. ”Having watched the other children opening their gifts, I already knew that the big gifts were not necessarily the nicest ones. One girl my age got a large coloring book of biblical...
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...In the Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, a American born daughter of Chinese immigrants, a variety of collisions within Chinese-American cultures is explained. Most significantly the characters of Jing-Mei, representing the Americanized new generation of Chinese culture, and Suyuan, representing the Old Chinese generation, exemplify this throughout the novel. For instance, when Jing-Mei Woo or “June”, the daughter of Suyuan Woo, who founded the Joy Luck Club, is introduced, she represents the Americanized new generation of the Chinese daughters in the story, which can already be inferred because of the Americanization of her name from Jing-Mei to “June”. She struggles with accepting her heritage and -like the other daughters in the novel- is a conformist to American culture and society, trying to abandon Chinese customs and values. While her mother, Suyuan Woo, represents the mothers in the story who are the older Chinese generation with laid back values and expectations trying to ensure an opulent life for their children....
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...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...
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...pursuit of desire, and how if you take it to a certain extent it can result in tragedy if the individual chooses not to conform. Paul wants to please his mother because his mother feels that there family has no luck, but Paul believes that he is lucky. Paul suddenly becomes consumed with this sudden spree of good luck and feels this is the only way he will be able to gain to the affection of his mother. D.H Lawrence reveals that Paul has a certain flaw that turns him to believe that the only way he will be able to gain his mothers love and affection is by winning money in the horse races. He leads this pursuit of desire to the standards he thought he wanted to, but not to the standards that would have achieved what he wanted, which leads to his down fall. When individuals desire love from another, they may choose to conform their beliefs and actions to that person. At first they may feel successful, however if they sacrifice everything, in pursuing this kind of goal, they may pay a heavy price instead of gaining there hearts desire. Paul desire his mother’s love more than anything. However he believes he needs to prove he is lucky. He struggles to prove that he is to make his mother happy. Paul wants his mother to love him more than anything. For Paul’s mother money equals luck, and this will gain her love. “There must be more money”(19). He hears these voices throughout the house. They hear these voices when they are receiving items of joy, especially around Christmas time. The...
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...striking story about a 1. little boy, Paul who secretly rides his rocking horse to pick the winning horse in the various horse races that took place. After the beginning of the story, there is a short conversation between Paul and his mother about luck, and it was the conversation that started the whole dramatic episode which lead to Paul's death. The conversation between Paul and his mother, the phrase that is constantly heard in the house and the rocking horse itself are the main ideas covered in the scope of this paper. The dialogue between Paul and his mother is mainly about luck and how a person can get money if such a person is lucky. From the story, the reader should be aware of Hester's crave for money and her expensive taste, therefore, it is not surprising when she talks her son into believing that luck brings money. We could also establish at this point that the family is at least living comfortably, meaning they were not very poor; "They lived in a pleasant house, with a garden, and they had discreet servants." Paul's mother tells him that his father is not lucky and because of this, she is no longer a lucky woman. The conversation ends with Paul believing that he is a lucky boy, and the action he takes in finding this luck is what brings his demise in the end. The phrase "there must be more money" was mentioned in the story over ten times. The phrase symbolizes the insatiable desire the family has for money. In the early parts of the story the phrase was being...
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