Chapter Seven, Anecdote, Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club

Half and Half
 

"And I think now that fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention. But somehow, when you lose something you love, faith takes over. You have to pay attention to what you lost. You have to undo the expectation".
-Page 131

Rose, An-mei's daughter, is getting a divorce and is nervous to tell her mother. She knows her mother will tell her to keep trying to make the marriage work. Although Rose feels that all hope is lost for her marriage, An-mei tells her that even though there may not be hope it is still her life and she should still try to take control of the situation. Everyone thinks that An-mei gave up on faith along time ago when her son Bing fell into the ocean and was lost forever, but Rose sees past that. Once Bing died at the age of four, An-mei used her white Bible, that she carried around so faithfully, as a tool to hold up the table. She had lost her faith and put her trust in fate. However, as Rose recalls, when Bing fell into the ocean An-mei put her trust in God's hands and would not give up hope. She truly believed that she could find him and bring him back, but unfortunately she was wrong and that's when she "lost" her faith and banished the Bible. Rose, however, knows that this is not completely true. She recognizes her mother looking at the Bible under the table from time to time.  She teaches her daughter that just because there is no hope does not mean that she can not change the reality.

The quote I have chosen explains that you can change fate by paying attention to what has already happened and by undoing what is expected. This quote was meant to teach people that they can control their fate if they care enough to try to change it. It is also saying that ultimately when the chips are down, you turn to your faith whether you mean to or not. Personally, in my own life, I find myself always turning to prayer when I am going through a rough time, whether it is a family problem or a test at school. I feel that often people try to blame fate when something goes wrong. When it reality it seems that if they would have been conscious of what was going on around them, things could have turned out for the better.

This chapter is an example of the many ANECDOTES in this novel. It tells a brief narrative of a particular incident. "We had gone to the beach to a seculded spot south of the city near Devil's Slide..."(121).