Chapter Six, Limited Narrator, Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club

The Voice from the Wall

"The mother nodded: 'Now I have perfect understanding. I have already experienced the worst. After this, there is no worst possible thing"'.

-Page 115

Lena St. Clair is the speaker in this disturbing chapter. She is the daughter of "Auntie" Ying-ying. She speaks of the depression her mother had as she grew up. Her mother was always frightened by evils. She was convinced there was an evil man in their old basement and random strangers were going to impregnate her daughter and then kill them all. Lena realized when she was five that she began to see terrible things too. She saw "devils" in the sandbox and other frightening things that would always be around. Although she learned to deal with them her mother could not. Lena tells the story of how her mother and father found out they were pregnant with her younger sibling and then lost the baby. Ying-ying said she knew the baby was going to die. After the miscarriage she began to break down piece by piece, until she was almost always in bed. Lena watched as her mother deteriorated.

They lived in an apartment where Lena could hear the family on the other side from her bedroom. Every night as she went to sleep she would listen to the most awful fights between a mother and her twelve year old daughter. It sounded as if she were beating her half to death and screaming bloody murder. Lena thought about her life compared to that girl's and thought she had the better deal. She was not as upset about her life, knowing that it could be worse. The quote I have chosen from this chapter explains that once you have witnessed or experienced the worst thing then you know that there is nothing left to fear. Once you know this then you can finally escape from being terrified of what is to come. It allows you to have a sense of peace. Lena wanted her mother to realize this. FDR's quote, "There is nothing to fear, but fear itself", I thought really connected with this chapter. Ying-ying needed to realize this so herself and her family could be at peace.

This chapter was told by a LIMITED NARRATOR. We were only given information by Lena St. Clair. Although she told her story well, we did not get to really see what Ying-ying, her father, and Teresa were thinking. 

"She barricaded the door with a chain and two types of key locks. And it became so mysterious that spent all my energies unraveling this door..."(103).