First+Draft+-+Wake+Up

[|2 - Draft 1.pages] Scott Rhee

__**Wake Up**__

“Wake up!” (Tan 269)

This was what An-mei Hsu said to her mother as she was slowly dying after poisoning herself. However, this isn’t a phrase that seems fitting to say not only to her mother, but also some of the most important people of her life - her daughter and herself. Many people believe that living in different cultures and growing up in totally different places leads to different people. However, this isn’t always the case. As we read Amy Tan’s best selling novel //The Joy Luck Club//, we can gradually observe the changes that transform Rose Hsu Jordan, An-mei’s daughter through analogous stories to thus be the “American Translation” of An-mei.

As a child, An-mei grew up with her grandmother and uncle, who demanded that An-mei’s mother not to be talked about - she was a concubine and a social outcast. Then, after choosing to live with her mother, she found herself in a wealthy merchant’s new home, filled with deception and manipulation due to the power struggle of his wives. Because An-mei’s mother was the fourth and lowest concubine, she had the last power in the house, and this struggle of power is portrayed through the story of the magpipes - their tears, or sadness, is eaten up with joy by the magpipes, or other people in their house. "And that is why you must learn to swallow your own tears," An-mei’s mother says (244). Through this suppression, An-mei grows up in a childhood of repression.

Similarly, Rose grows up in a situation which helps her become passive - during a beach trip as a child, she is momentarily distracted while she was supposed to watch him, and Bing eventually falls into the water. Fearing to take responsibility with the prospect of failure looming, she eventually loses all her faith in herself and becomes introspective and passive, concluding that “the most I [Rose] could have was hope” (128). Therefore, this shows that both An-mei’s and Rose’s childhood was filled with some type of suppression that forced them each to grow up passively. However, as each grows up, there is one event in their lives that turn them into who they are at the end of their lives - a more complete, active, engaging person. An-mei, whose mother is slowly suffering in the internal house between herself and the Second Wife, the woman who controls, decides to commit suicide 2 days before the Chinese New Year, deciding that “she would rather kill her own weak spirit so she could give me a stronger one” (271). The wealthy merchant, An-mei’s superstitious husband, believe that An-mei’s mother’s ghost will hunt for him unless he gives her and An-mei some respect - he elevates them to “First Wife” status and takes care of An-mei as his own. With her newfound power, she realizes and seeks to confront the deception of the Second Wife and in front of her, throws a fake pearl necklace given to her by the Second Wife earlier and crushes it with her foot. It is the day that An-mei learns “to shout” and also the day that the Second Wife’s hair begins “to turn white,” implying her downfall. (272). By the end of the story, An-mei makes the transition from a child that was suppressed to a more confident and freed child.

As An-mei raises Rose, she sees bits and traces of her mother and herself in her American daughter, citing genetics and heredity as the cause of her passiveness. “Even though I taught my daughter the opposite, still she came out the same way! Maybe it is because she was born to me” (241). Rose’s pivotal event in her life is her divorce with her “hero[ic]” husband Ted (125). In a time of confusion and despondency in her life, she remembers something that her mother told her when she was younger - “I [Rose] listened to too many people... If you bend to listen to other people, you will grow crooked and weak.” (213). For the next three days, Rose takes a long nap - a time of self-reflection and meditation to sort the confusion in her life and come to a revelation. And after her nap, she gains enough courage to fight back to her soon-to-be ex-husband by confronting him and fighting for the house. Thus, this shows that there is a big change in Rose’s personality, when she explains that “that expression of his USED to terrify me” (219). But not anymore - we can see that Rose has made her transition similar to how her mother has made hers. The careful nudging of her mother and the circumstances lead to a similar, yet so different, change.

In conclusion, culture can only do so much to change a person; all culture does is change how people act based on what’s around them, but what’s inside doesn’t change - basic genetics and traits of a person don’t change, including An-mei and Rose. In the paragraphs above, daughter follows mother in their quest to find themselves in life-changing events that change them forever in ways that can only benefit them. In other words, they woke up.