A Study Of Symbolism On The Characters In The Joy Luck Club

In the past thirty years, Chinese American literature has gained growing attention through the endeavor of the Chinese American writers. The focus of this thesis is on the famous Chinese American writer Amy Tan and masterpiece The Joy Luck Club (1989), which became an immediate success after publication and was enthusiastically received by critics and the public. Because of the success of The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan became one of the most beloved and successful international best-selling writers.Since its publication, The Joy Luck Club has become the interest of academic circles, both domestic and overseas. The studies on The Joy Luck Club are mainly from the following perspectives: cultural study narrative strategy and Chinese elements in the novel. The novel also shows Amy Tan's great talent to telling story, and the book is full of symbols, including the Joy Luck Club, the swan, Mah Jong, the East, the jade pendant, environment and settings ,and many critics have made great effort on the study of this topics. But, few of them ever paid enough attention on a systematic research of the symbolism on male and female characters. In this paper, the author try to use the symbolism theory of other critics, like William York Tynball, further study the male and female characters in this novel.The auther devide the male character of the novel into two groups: father,and husband . Indeed, compared with the female characters, description of them is far not enough and they speak little, even keep silent, like a shadow. But the author try hard to dig its meaning underneath from the facial fact. Besides, because the novel is a woman centered, the author put them into two groups too: mother and daugher.Through a detailed interpretation of Tan's use of symbolism, this thesis comes to a conclusion that by employing symbolism, Tan attributes great significance to the conflicts, communication and final reconciliation between Chinese mothers and Americanized daughters, which connotes the relationship between Chinese culture and American culture. Thus, through a happy ending, Amy Tan successfully conveys to readers her final intentions that in the age of globalization, the ancient China and the young America can eventually reach mutual understanding, communication, and trust in spite of the differences in culture, history and political system.