"The Joy Luck Club" by: Amy Tan
...na is revealed in the conversation between the Chinese woman and her swan on her journey to America in the novel’s first prologue. Ironically, this wish becomes the very source of conflicts and tension in their relationship.” She wants the very best for her daughter June. Even her name, Suyuan, meaning “long-cherished wish,” speaks of this hope for Jing-Mei, meaning “the pure, essential, best quality younger sister.” Suyuan tells her daughter that she can be anything she wants to be, and that she has great talent. At first June is excited and dreams about what she will become: ”In all my imaginings, I was filled with a sense that I would soon become perfect. My mother and father would adore me. I would be beyond reproach. I would never feel the need to sulk for anything.” (Tan 143) Suyuan pushes June to be successful in many different areas such as dance, academics, trivia, and piano. After failing to excel at each task set before her, June begins to feel more and more resentment towards her mother. She sees her mother’s hopes as expectations, and when she does not live up to those, she feels like a failure. The final incident, when June performs a piano piece filled with mistakes at a talent show, makes June believe that her mother is completely ashamed and disappointed with her. June looked through the crowd to her mother’s face. She thought to herself “…my mother’s expression was what devastated me: a quiet, blank look that said she had lost everything.”(Tan 143) What June did not realize, was that the real reason why her mother was upset was not because she had not lived her to her expectations. She was unhappy because June did not care about having the best for herself. She did not have high hopes or a passion to be successful at anything. She failed because she did not try and she did not care. This is in strong opposition to Suyuan’s high hopes that originate from the strong love she has for her daughter. It in not until much later in her life, after Suyuan’s death, that June realizes just how much her mother loves her and how proud she was of her. After Suyuan’s death, and after June learns more of the details about her mother’s past, June’s eyes open to the good intentions her mother always had for her in all of the ways that she acted. Because June does not make any of these discoveri...