Chapters 9,10,11, Symbol, Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club

Rice Husband- Lena St. Clair

Four Directions- Waverly Jong

Without Wood- Rose Hsu Jordan



"'A girl is like a young tree,' she said. 'You must stand tall and listen to your mother standing next to you. That is the only way to grow strong and straight. But if you bend to listen to other people, you will grow crooked and weak. You will fall to the ground with the first wind. And then you will be like a weed, growing wild in any direction, running along the ground until someone pulls you out and throws you away.'"

-An-mei

-Page 191

I feel that this quote applies to all three of these chapters. In each chapter Lena, Waverly, and Rose all show their insecure sides and reveal their relationship problems. They all want to avoid going to their mother's for their words of wisdom, but it is inevitable. Last Sunday when I went to mass the Gospel reminded me of this quote. There was a proverb in it that compared the weeds in a wheat field to sins and evil. In the quote I chose from the chapter, Without Wood, An-mei was telling Rose that if she lets other people influence her then her life won't be her own. Her life will flow in all different directions. She needs to think for herself, and with her mother's guidance, her life will be on the right track. This relates to the gospel reading I heard because God is leading us on a righteous path, but the weeds are meant to trip us up and lead us in other directions. This is just like when Rose is constantly tempted to seek advice from others to make the next move in her life.

The quote also applies to Lena in the chapter Rice Husband. She is influenced by her husband Harold and her mother Ying-ying. In Rice Husband, Lena is having marital problems when her mother comes to visit. She realizes that she and Harold are totally independent from one another. Lena is on her own financially, which Ying-ying, in her oh so subtle way, points out. She recalled a time in her life when her mother told her she would marry a bad man if she didn' eat all of her rice. Now this prediction has seemed to unfortunately, come true in her eyes. While reading the blog Finding the Joy in Being Together I agreed that her mother at the end of the chapter was trying to warn her to try to fix her marriage before it breaks.

In Four Directions, Waverly, a single mother, has difficulty telling her mother she is engaged to a non-Chinese man, Rich. He is awkward around her family, but she is in love with him. Her mother always finds flaws and Waverly is afraid that when she points them out they will affect how she herself feels about Rich. She felt she was being pulled in different directions. Her relationship with her mother was affecting her relationship with her fiance.

Chapter eleven, Without Wood is about Rose Hsu Jordan searching for answers as to why her marriage failed. She asks Lena and her other friends what the next move she should make is, but avoids her mother. The quote I have chosen is the explanation as to why her life, like her garden has fallen apart. I agree with An-mei's metaphor. People who listen only to others and not themselves do not have their own life. Instead they are just mimicing another life.

The literary term I chose for these chapters was SYMBOL. In Rice Husband two symbols are the rice and the table. The overgrown weeds in Rose's garden are the biggest symbol in Without Wood. "And below the heimongmong, all along the ground, were weeds already spilling out over the edges, running wild in every direction"(196).