Essay--1st+draft

__**The Invisible Power**__

//“No influence is so powerful as that of the mother”--Sarah Josepha Hale.//

Generation to generation, culture to culture, many people believe that the generation gap and the cultural differences lead to different people. However, like the quote above, the influence of the family, for daughters, the influence of the mother, is unstoppable and no matter how hard the daughters try to avoid the influence from their mothers, it is destined to happen. A powerful Asian literature book called, //The Joy Luck Club//, we can examine the relationship between daughters and mothers. Among those characters, Waverly Jong and Lindo Jong’s relationship demonstrates the differences between the mother and the daughter, but most importantly the irresistible influence of the mother.

“Check” was the word that Waverly always held in her lips as a child, when she was only six years old (Tan 98). As a young chess champion, Waverly was always overly confident in her skills and as for her mother, she was the one bragging about her daughter’s wonderful adeptness. After winning several games, Waverly started to see her mother always showing off “her” skills and trying to get all the credit for it. Not only this but Waverly also had a hard time concentrating at home due to her mother’s observation of her daughter’s chess practice. According to Waverly, every time she made a move, her mother would make “Hmmmmph” noise and bother her from concentrating (100). In addition, Waverly says with resentment, “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? (101). To this point, Waverly and Lindo have different viewpoints. As for Waverly, she only sees her mother as her competitor; however, Lindo was only trying to show how wonderful her daughter was and didn’t have any intention of embarrassing her daughter. This generation gap of misunderstanding each other led both Waverly and Lindo to have different opinions and different perspectives.

As an adult, Waverly “still sounded the way she did twenty-five years ago...” (228). Waverly didn’t change, she still had her same cockiness. Jing-mei’s family decided to have a crab dinner to celebrate the Chinese New Year. They invited the Lindo’s family. While the Jing-mei’s family and Lindo’s family were feasting, argument between Waverly and Lindo grabbed everyone’s attention. When Waverly said, “Crab isn’t Chinese,” her mother responded by saying, “how do you know what is Chinese, what is not Chinese?” (228). Afterwards, Lindo demonstrated the proper technique by saying, “you have to dig in here, get this out. The brain is most tastiest, you try” (228). After looking at Lindo’s behavior of taking out the best part of the crab, Waverly and Rich “whispered to each other, gross” (229). The behavior of Lindo and the behavior of Waverly is so different and the cultural differences makes the two people become two totally different people. The cultural differences allows them to see different viewpoints. By looking at the situation, maybe age doesn’t change the different opinions. Or do they...?

When Lindo was a child, her life was different than Waverly’s. She was forced to marry a man who she had no feelings to and spend every single day doing chores. For Waverly, she had a chance to show her talent through chess and had a fairly good life. Moreover, Waverly was strong, confident, and arrogant--which shows how the life she had wasn’t so bat at all. However, Lindo struggled to find the happiness. Lindo said, “... I didn’t have instant love for my future husband the way you see on the television today” (46). However, Lindo starts to change her mind about her life. Like Waverly, Lindo starts to believe in herself. She says that she “was surprised at what I saw. I had on a beautiful red dress, but what I saw was even more valuable” (53). She later states, “I was strong. I was pure. I had genuine thoughts inside that no one could see, that no one could ever take away from me. I was like the wind” (53). This demonstrates how Lindo and Waverly are so alike. Although at first, Lindo showed weakness in herself, she later started to believe in herself. Lindo and Waverly both have confident minds and both are strong-willed women. Moreover, Lindo’s influence of being strong and confident passed down to her daughter, Waverly.

As time went by, Waverly and Lindo started to understand each other. When Waverly was stressed about how to tell her mother about Rich and their marriage, the invisible connection started to appear. Waverly cried out to her mother, “... when you met him, you said he had spots on his face” (201). Lindo’s responded to this by saying, “Ai-ya, why do you think these bad things about me?” and later it says that Lindo’s “face looked old and full of sorrow” (201). All these things started to be visible to Waverly now. When Waverly was a little girl and up till now, she was ignorant about her mother’s true purpose. Waverly started to see her mother’s true meaning and see how her mother cared for her. The influence of her mother was being shown to Waverly and all the miscommunication between the two started to be solved step by step. And as they were having little talks or arguments, Waverly said “... although I still didn’t know where this conversation was going, I felt soothed. It seemed like the first time we had had an almost normal conversation” (202). This show that even though Waverly and Lindo had different cultural backgrounds, the inside, was the same. Most importantly, the influence of Lindo allowed Waverly to see the true meaning behind her mother’s words.

Mother to daughter, invisible to visible, the relationship between Waverly and Lindo advocates how the cultural differences and the generation gap don’t effect the inside of the person. In other words, the true self. Lindo’s background and way of thinking may look different than Waverly’s from the outside, but in the inside, Lindo’s influence led Waverly to also follow her mother’s path and have the same mind set. Overall, the invisible influence of mother’s power may be unseen by the daughter, but later the results was to be seen.

Susan Kim - revision & comments