To gain a better understanding of how language and visual techniques work together to create meaning, it is a good idea to analyse a few key scenes from the text.
Activity
Make notes about a key scene in The Joy Luck Club, taking into account:
• language or visual techniques
• examples of the techniques from the text
• analysis of how these examples relate to belonging.
Then write a full analysis of the scene and its techniques, and their relation to belonging.
An example of a scene has been included in the following modelled response. After you have read the modelled response, choose a different scene to analyse.
Modelled response
Key scene: LENA ST. CLAIR, beginning of ‘Voice from the Wall’
Techniques and examples:
- Horrific images of murder – ‘Sword was cutting me down’, ‘cleaver to chop up his bones’
- Personification of ‘unspeakable terrors’ that ‘chased’ Lena’s mother
- Storytelling of the evil man in the basement
- Metaphors of horrible things Lena’s sees with her ‘Chinese eyes’ - lightning striking down little children, she squashing a beetle with the face of a child, dangerous monkey rings, tether balls splashing a girl’s head in front of laughing girls in a playground.
- Similes describe Lena’s appearance - ‘smooth as beach pebbles’ cheeks and her ‘faded in the sun’ skin.
- Visual image of Lena pushing her eyes in on the sides shows her determination to look Caucasian.
- Anecdote of Lena’s father changing his wife’s name and identity from a tiger to a dragon to show that her mother lost her tiger spirit.
Analysis:
- The effect of the imagination on Lena’s perception of the world is portrayed in the beginning of ‘Voices from the Wall’.
- Lena interprets what she is told about her family into horrible images of death and destruction, demonstrating her mistrust of her own culture.
- She perceives the beggar sentenced to death by her great-grandfather through images of pain and suffering - prevents belonging.
- Lena thinks that it does matter to ‘know what is the worst possible thing that could happen to you’ as this is the only way to avoid its affect.
- Her mother tells her a tale through storytelling about the evil man who lives in the basement to protect her child.
- The horrible things Lena’s sees with her Chinese eyes shows the difference between Chinese girls and Caucasian girls, saying that she saw things that they did not, emphasizing her isolation from the dominant American culture.
-Description of Lena’s appearance indicates her half Chinese and half Irish heritage and that people would not immediately recognise her difference.
- She identifies her eyes as being from her mother, with no eyelids, showing how she longed for rounder eyes, like other Caucasians.
- Lena compares her eyes to her mother’s in a photo taken on her wedding day.
- Lena’s mother is declared a Displaced Person, the authorities not knowing how to categorise her on her release from Angel Island Immigration Station as they did not have a category for Chinese wife of a Caucasian person.
- Her father innocently changes the identity of her mother, incorrectly writing her name and year of birth.
- The photo also shows her mother’s displacement through the wedding dress and Westernized jacket she is wearing.
- Her father misinterprets Lena’s mother’s startled look in the photograph as being due to her confusion about the word ‘cheese’ said by her father when the photo was taken.
- Lena suggests that her mother continued to look ‘waiting for something to happen’, only later she lost the ‘struggle to keep her eyes open’.
Full analysis of how the techniques and examples represent belonging:
The effect of the imagination on Lena’s perception of the world is portrayed in the beginning of ‘Voices from the Wall’. Lena perceives what she is told about her Chinese family through horrific images of murder – ‘Sword was cutting me down’, ‘cleaver to chop up his bones’ - demonstrating her mistrust of her own culture. She has an overactive imagination; she sees the worst in things, something she gets from her mother. Her mother interprets her daughter’s morbid thoughts as representing American culture; the morbid aspects of the culture she does not understand, although they are shared with Chinese culture. Lena perceives the beggar sentenced to death by her great-grandfather through images of pain and suffering - in this case through death. Her understanding of belonging goes beyond living - even through death one cannot escape pain and a harrowing sense of belonging. Lena thinks that it does matter to ‘know what is the worst possible thing that could happen to you’ as this is the only way to avoid its affect. ‘Knowing the worst possible thing that could happen to you’ becomes a metaphor for how people separate themselves from their own spirit and from their society. She thinks that these unspeakable things are what eat away at people from the inside. It’s these types of secrets that found their way to the ‘dark corner’ of her mother’s mind. She associates these thoughts as ‘devouring’ her mother until she became a ghost. Horrible events in life separate us from our true selves and prevent us from belonging.
Lena’s curiosity leads her to the basement of her house in Oakland that she was forbidden to enter. When she eventually pries the door to the basement open and falls into a ‘deep chasm’, her mother tells her a tale. The storytelling about the evil man, who lives in the basement and does horrible things to little girls like plant babies in their bellies only to eat them and their mothers, whole frighten Lena and separate her from her culture. The composer uses visual imagery of ‘horrible things’ Lena sees with her ‘Chinese eyes’ - lightning striking down little children, she squashing a beetle with the face of a child - as a way of showing the difference between Chinese girls and Caucasian girls. Lena recognises that she saw things that they did not - dangerous monkey rings, tether balls splashing a girl’s head in front of laughing girls in a playground - emphasising her isolation from the dominant American culture. These are painful, but humiliating images, indicating Lena’s shame of her culture.
The composer illustrates through visual imagery how character’s perceptions of physical appearances can prevent meaningful belonging. The description of Lena’s appearance indicates her half Chinese and half Irish heritage, highlighting the difficulty Lena experiences belonging to both cultures. The composer uses similes to describe Lena’s ‘smooth as beach pebbles’ cheeks and her ‘faded in the sun’ skin. Lena’s eyes are from her mother, with no eyelids, emphasising how she longed for rounder eyes, like other Caucasians. This is shown through a visual image of her pushing her eyes in on the sides attempting to look Caucasian, although she seemed odd as her father asked her why she looked scared. The comparison of a photo of Lena and her mother with the same startled look connects the mother and daughter. The visual image of the photo helps the responder to understand Lena’s mother’s struggle to belong as she was declared a Displaced Person. The authorities did not know how to categorise her on her release from Angel Island Immigration Station as they did not have a category for Chinese wife of a Caucasian person. The composer uses an anecdote from Lena’s father to show that her mother lost her tiger spirit. Her father innocently changes the identity of her mother, incorrectly writing her name and year of birth. Her mother lost her name and became a ‘dragon’ instead of a ‘tiger’. The dress her mother is wearing in the photo further develops her mother’s displacement. She is wearing a traditional Chinese dress, a wedding gift form Lena’s father, with a ‘Westernized suit jacket’ covering up her heritage. The jacket looks awkward on her ‘small body’. Lena interprets the image of her mother as showing that she was ‘neither coming from nor going to someplace,’ an unusual thought considering it was her wedding day. Lena’s father misinterprets Lena’s mother’s startled look in the photograph as being due to her confusion about the word ‘cheese’ said by her father when the photo was taken. Lena suggests that her mother continued to look like she was ‘waiting for something to happen’. Later, Lena realises, her mother lost the ‘struggle to keep her eyes open’, giving up hope of belonging comfortably in her new environment.
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